
Class B A -^ 

Book 
GopightN". 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



ENGLAND 



AN ACCOUNT OF PAST AND CONTEMPORARY 
CONDITIONS AND PROGRESS 



Edited and Arranged by 

JOHN M. HALL 



Published by the 

BAY VIEW READING CLUB 

CENTRAL OFFICE BOSTON BOULEVARD 

DETROIT. MICH. 

1906 




CopyrigHted, 1906 

BY 

JOHN M. HALL 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I PAGE 

At the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century, 3 

CHAPTER n 
The March of Events 16 

CHAPTER HI 
Improvements in Social Conditions 30 

CHAPTER IV 
Further Reforms, and Moral Efforts 45 

CHAPTER V 

How ENGLA.ND Is GOVERNED 60 

CHAPTER VI 
The English House of Commons 78 

CHAPTER VII 
Three Leaders of the British Parliament. . 87 

CHAPTER VIII 
English Industrial Conditions 97 

CHAPTER IX 
Condition of Education 108 

CHAPTER X 
Women's Colleges in England 122 

CHAPTER XI 
British Social Life 131 

CHAPTER XII 
Recent Impressions of the English 141 



PREFACE 

TN planning a study course on England for the mem- 
1 bers of the Bay View Reading Clubs, and for 
" solitaire " members, it seemed important that much 
consideration should be given to contemporary life 
and conditions. Of some countries their golden age 
is in the past. Of such are Italy and Spain. There 
are other lands which live or have lived deeply m 
some particular field, where the race of each has ex- 
pressed and may still be expressing its endeavor with 
so much splendor that all else is of secondary value. 
Witness how French and Dutch history and art eclipse 
all else of interest to students. But England's greatest 
vitality is nozv, and it is expressed with almost unri- 
valled force in nearly every field of thought and ac- 
tivity. England is, all in all, the greatest moral, polit- 
ical, literary, and civilizing power in the modern world. 
Therefore, a consideration of contemporary England 
is a theme of the very first importance, and to omit 
it in any scheme of study would be a serious defect. 
But when search was made for the right book, behold 
there was none! Great libraries were searched and 
English publishers were interested, but the book had 
not yet been written. 

It was an anxious moment for the management, 
who were desirous of breaking away from the beaten 
course and the ruts of all club study since clubs began 



2 PREFACE 

studying England. Finally the plan of this book came 
and has been worked out. It seemed as if the idea of 
a book on the subject had already come at about the 
same time to writers working independently in Eng- 
land, the United States, and France, and that in some 
of the best reviews, magazines, and recent books they 
had each taken up in a special way some of the threads 
which another, wath a comprehensive and orderly plan, 
could weave into a rich and useful fabric. And this 
is what has been done in this book. While the plan 
has its disadvantages, on the other hand it gives a 
work each of whose chapters is the contribution of 
a specialist. Acknowledgment is made of the generous 
consent of publishers to use the material, and at the 
end of each chapter is a key-letter which directs the 
reader to the last page of the book for the authorship 
and source of the chapter. License has been taken 
to correct some parts with the latest statistics and 
information; also to eliminate unimportant material 
in the interest of limitations of space ; and to do some 
slirht editing in order to unite all the work in a smooth 
fabric. 

J. M. Hall. 



ENGLAND 



CHAPTER I 

THE BEGINNING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

CONTEMPORARY England can be best under- 
stood if we begin with a consideration of times 
and conditions a century ago. In this way the prog- 
ress that has been made and contemporary life which 
are always relative, will be best judged when measured 
on the background of the past. A glance at some 
examples of character and conduct, of life and man- 
ners, of laws and customs, of labor and recreation, 
mainly as seen in London, will greatly help to picture 
to our readers the condition of England generally as 
it was in the first year of the nineteenth century. 

For ten years the country had been more or less 
engaged in war which had left its traces everywhere. 
Food was scarce; there was no foreign grain in the 
market in those days, the only supply other than that 
which England itself yielded being the occasional 
booty gained by the stopping of the grain ships of neu- 
tral powers and the forcible sale of their cargoes. 
Later in the year food became still dearer and scarcer ; 
throughout London and the country food riots became 



4 ENGLAND 

prevalent, and so great was the scarcity of corn that 
the king issued a proclamation asking those who could 
obtain supplies to use the strictest economy in the use 
of every kind of grain. 

The general food of the poor and the middle 
classes was at all times much plainer than now, nor 
had they so much variety. The state of the roads 
made it impossible to supply London with fresh foods 
throughout the year, consequently salt meat and fish 
formed the staple diet during the winter months, and 
as fresh vegetables for the same reason were unob- 
tainable, meat, bread, and cheese, with beer, com- 
posed the regular bill-of-fare. In higher classes of 
society the ordinary food was also much plainer and 
coarser than at the present time. There was a preju- 
dice against French cookery, game was scarce and 
dear, poultry was seen only at the tables of the rich, 
and the usual fare was beef and mutton varied by mut- 
ton and beef. 

The enormous expenditures for war purposes made 
it necessary to impose taxation to an almost boundless 
extent, and this, in conjunction with the scarcity of 
food, made the condition of the poor, upon whom 
taxation always falls heaviest, almost hopeless. 
Bread, sugar, salt, tea, and malt, — all those things 
which have come to be regarded as necessaries of life, 
— were taxed heavily, and so great was the poverty 
resulting in 1801, that four millions sterling was ex- 
pended in the relief of the poor in England and 
Wales. 



ENGLAND 5 

The working-classes at this period groaned under 
equally heavy burdens, were fettered by vexatious 
laws, and were stung by the reproach that they were 
but a mere part of the machinery of the country. 
None of the thousand schemes now in operation for 
their benefit were in existence, and no efforts were 
made in any direction to uplift and improve them, 
physically, morally, or spiritually. The factory sys- 
tem was cruelly oppressive; mines and collieries were 
worked in great measure by women and children, 
under conditions that were a disgrace to civilization ; 
bakers, sailors, and chimney-sweeps were left unpro- 
tected by legislation. Friendly societies, many of 
them rotten to the core, were the only legalized means 
of self-help ; post-office savings banks, or their equiva- 
lents had scarcely yet entered into the thought of 
man; sanitary science was practically unknown; edu- 
cation was not a right ; ragged schools, reformatories, 
and industrial schools, mechanics' institutes and work- 
men's clubs, had not begun to exist; limited liability, 
enabling the poorer classes to contribute their small 
capital to the increase of the productive power of the 
country, was not so much as thought of. The poor 
laws were pauperizing and degrading; the stamp du- 
ties were an effectual bar to the poor man enforcing 
legal claims ; there was no compensation for accidents. 
The tastes of all classes, high and low, were degener- 
ate and coarse, and the cheap literature of the day 
only pandered to it. Crime was rampant, and a spirit 
of turbulence and lawlessness was beginning to mani- 



6 ENGLAND 

fest itself. The only resource of the people in 
self-defence and the only argument they understood 
was that of violence, and the vast machine of phi- 
lanthropy so familiar since the second half of the cen- 
tury, was but in its infancy. 

In religious circles an unmistakable lethargy had 
taken possession of the clergy and laity, ministers and 
people, alike. The cathedrals were little more than 
show places in which perfunctory services were per- 
formed before scant congregations. Westminster 
x\bbey and St. Paul's were never thronged with eager 
listeners to stirring appeals ; none of the great reli- 
gious edifices of the land were filled, except on the oc- 
casion of some great funeral or great public function. 
The old parish churches were the dreariest and most 
desolate of places, cold and cheerless ; while the teach- 
ing and preaching of the Gospel by laymen was un- 
dreamed of except by the followers of John Wesley. 

In such a state of things it follows almost as a 
matter of course that crime of all kinds flourished, 
especially in the great cities. The means for its re- 
pression were ridiculously inadequate. In London 
the safety of life and property depended upon the ef- 
forts of the parochial watchmen, familiarly termed 
" Charlies." At night — for it was not deemed neces- 
sary to set a watch in the daytime — the authorities 
provided him with a watchbox in order that the old 
man might snooze in comfort, and furnished him with 
a huge lantern in order that its rays might enable the 
thief to get out of his way in time. He was also pro- 



ENGLAND 7 

vided with a staff with which he thundered on the 
pavement as he walked, alternating this racket with 
crying the hour and the state of the weather in a loud 
singing voice, thus better proclaiming his whereabouts 
when he himself was far out of sight. In 1805 the 
horse patrol was instituted to suppress the highway 
robberies which nightly took place in the outer dis- 
tricts, but it was not until 1829 that Sir Robert Peel 
organized a new police force which was immediatdy 
nicknamed after him " Bobbies " or " Peelers." Plow- 
ever, no means existed by which the watchmen of va- 
rious districts could be made to co-operate against 
their common foe, the thief, for in the city they were 
under the direction of thirty different authorities, and 
the constable of one ward could not interfere to pre- 
vent a robbery going on on the opposite side of the 
street if it was out of his bounds. It is not surpris- 
ing therefore that with scarcity of food, heavy taxa- 
tion, extreme poverty, and such a police force, robbery 
and crime increased to an alarming extent. Pick- 
pockets pursued their illegal traffic in open daylight, 
body-snatchers rifled the graves of the dead at 
night, while highway robberies and murders were 
everyday occurrences. The criminal laws were bar- 
barous and cruel and correspondingly ineffectual, 
though administered in a relentless spirit. Death was 
the punishment for great as well as small crimes, and 
transportation, imprisonment, the stocks, the pillory, 
and public whipping were meted out to more petty 
offenders. In the army and navy the discipline was 



8 ENGLAND 

cruelly severe, and the principal instrument of tor- 
ture used on the men was the lash, administered with 
horrible barbarity. 

Perhaps the most significant commentary on all 
this excessive system of crime and punishment is the 
fact that in 1800 there were eighteen prisons in Lon- 
don alone ; whereas, in 1850, when the population had 
enormously increased, that number had been reduced 
one-third. In 1773 John Howard, the celebrated phi- 
lanthropist, paid his visits of inspection to the chief 
of English prisons, and what *he saw then might have 
been, with few exceptions, seen at the dawn of the 
nineteenth century. Nearly every one was not only 
unsanitary and ill-ventilated, but filthy, poisonous, and 
over-crowded. Disease was prevalent in excessive 
forms, and as no measures were taken to prevent its 
spread, the prison became the death-trap of luck- 
less persons who, in nine out of ten cases, ought not to 
have been there at all ; many of the prisons were totally 
unfit for human habitations; both sexes were con- 
fined therein ; and so evilly were they managed that 
free intercourse was allowed between prisoners. In 
many prisons the jailor received no salary, but made 
his livelihood from the fees he could extort from the 
prisoners and their friends; in some cases he paid a 
commission for the privilege of holding the ofiice. 
Not only had the prisoner to pay for his food and for 
the straw he slept on, but if he failed to pay his dues 
he would be detained until he did so, even though his 
term of imprisonment had expired. In Cold Bath 



ENGLAND 9 

Fields prison men, women, and children of tender years 
were indiscriminately herded together without employ- 
ment or wholesome control. At the celebrated Fleet 
Prison a grated window had inscribed above it, " Pray 
remember the poor prisoners having no allowance," 
while a small box beneath received the charity of the 
passing public. At Newgate, historic old spot, in 
1808, the women numbered from one hundred to one 
hundred and thirty, and each had only eighteen inches 
of sleeping room, and all were packed like slaves in 
the hold of a ship. When Elizabeth Fry visited this 
prison some years later, she found its inmates swearing, 
gambling, singing, dancing, drinking, and dressing in 
men's clothes. 

The amusements of a people indicate very fairly the 
level of their civilization and attainment, and we now 
look in horror at the things in which our forefathers 
sought their recreation. Bull-baiting, a most cruel 
and degrading sport, although not patronized so much 
by the leaders of fashion as in previous years, was still 
practiced openly. An interesting incident which shows 
the spirit of the times was the introduction in May, 
1802, of a bill into the House of Commons, by William 
Wilberforce and Sheridan, for the suppression of this 
brutal sport. In spite of the eloquence of its defend- 
ers, the House listened to the argument of their oppos- 
ers that " the measure was the first result of the con- 
spiracy of the Jacobins and Methodists to render the 
people grave and serious," and refused to abolish the 
amusement. 



10 ENGLAND 

Prize-fighting was popular, and cock-fighting a com- 
mon feature of the day's sport. The great London 
Fair had degenerated into a somewhat disreputable af- 
fair, country fairs were held frequently for the hiring 
of servants and as commercial markets, and tea gar- 
dens, especially near the metropolis, were the delight 
of the English heart. Drunkenness was almost uni- 
versal, and dancing booths and drinking saloons were 
the most prominent features of these gatherings. 

The manners of the day were essentially coarse, 
and morality was at a very low ebb. A dinner party 
was regarded as a failure if the guests did not drink 
deeply, and it was considered no disgrace, rather the 
proper thing, for those who could quaff no more, to 
seek that repose on the floor which the seat at the 
table failed to afford. Profane language was the 
fashion for gentlemen, from the king on the throne to 
the lowest scion of higher society. Ladies swore 
orally and in their letters. Gambling was very preva- 
lent in all classes and was practiced by both sexes. 
The government demoralized the public by their li- 
censed lotteries, and the mischief created by such a 
system was incalculable. 

When the century opened there were vast areas 
around every important center where no provision 
whatever was made for the education of the poor chil- 
dren. Not half of the adult population in the manu- 
facturing districts could either read or write. Chil- 
dren, instead of being placed at school, were sent to the 
factory districts, where they were treated with incred- 



ENGLAND 11 

ible cruelty and worked inordinately long hours. Ow- 
ing to the invention of the spinning- jenny and other 
loom improvements, the spinners of England were 
obliged to work in the mills in place of their own 
homes, and instead of being comparatively their 
own masters, working when they would, they were 
under masters who forced them to labor for what- 
ever wages they were pleased to give and for whatever 
hours they chose to dictate. Remonstrance was in 
vain, and the only alternatives facing the laborer were 
these : Water could now be employed to do the harder 
part of the work formerly done by men, who if they 
were refractory could be sent adrift by the manu- 
facturer without loss; and as the machinery invented 
could be managed by children almost as successfully as 
by adults, their labor could be transferred to chil- 
dren. Thus the demand for child labor was created 
and the supply was immediately forthcoming. Young 
children were drafted from the workhouses, child-job- 
bers scoured the country to purchase children whom 
they resold into the bondage of factory slavery on the 
one hand and to owners of brickyards, coal pits, and 
proprietors of agricultural gangs on the other. 

Education under such circumstances was impossi- 
ble, and tens of thousands of children were drifting 
into maturity with a painful knowledge of what was 
evil, unjust, and immoral, and without any of the 
higher knowledge which makes life worth living. 

It is difficult to realize the enormous changes that 
have taken place within the century in the means of 



12 ENGLAND 

traveling. In its early days there were the mail 
coaches for the well-to-do, the stage coaches for the 
middle classes, and the stage wagons for the poor. No 
railroad was yet in existence, and steam although un- 
derstood was not utilized for the steamboat or loco- 
motive. Many of the main roads were good, but few 
of them were old, and they developed mile by mile as 
the system of coach traveling developed. Before that 
time communication with other parts of the country 
could only be made on horseback at the rate of thirty 
or forty miles a day. In the cities the sedan chair 
was not altogether obsolete, and owing to the ex- 
pense of conveyance by road the rivers and canals 
were used much more in proportion than they are now. 
Yet even a trip by water was regarded as a perilous 
undertaking, and a voyage to Margate was looked 
upon as a feat of maritime daring by Paterfamilias, 
who, it is said, made his will and settled all his worldly 
affairs before embarking in the old Margate '' Hoy," 
which lumbered down the river at the rate of six or 
seven miles an hour, and might reach its desired haven 
in twenty-four hours or forty-eight, according to wind 
and tide. Shipping extended from London Bridge to 
Greenwich, but the docks were, few and poor. In 1800 
the first stone of the West India Docks was laid, in 
1802 that of the London Docks, and that of the East 
India Docks in 1806. 

Wherever the traveler went, either by road, river, or 
canal, he was always sure to find good accommodation 
for man and beast in the humble wayside taverns or 



ENGLAND 13 

the more pretentious coaching inns, which made up 
beds and catered to the general needs of a fleeting but 
well-to-do population. The hotel proper was as yet 
in its infancy and in all London there were not twenty 
hotels at this time. 

Food for thought may be found in the brief recital 
of one or two aspects of London in the year 1800. It 
was regarded as the best-paved city in the world, the 
main thoroughfares being flagged and curbed, with 
sewers under them and gratings for the water to run 
into them from the gutters. But the side streets had 
only " kidney " stones on end and no sewers. Drink- 
ing water was, as a rule, supplied from pumps, and 
was greatly inferior to that used to-day because the 
laws of sanitation were in their infancy and drainage 
was shamefully defective. One branch of industry 
long ago dropped was the supplying of spring water 
for drinking purposes at the rate of a penny or two- 
pence a bucket. There was no competent fire bri- 
gade until 1832, and each insurance company kept its 
own staff of firemen, engines, etc. There was no gas, 
only twinkling oil lamps flickering with every gust and 
going out altogether in a strong wind, and always 
wanting their wicks trimmed and a fresh supply of 
oil. Pall Mall was lighted with gas on January 28, 
1807, — the first street so lighted in the world's his- 
tory. There were no matches or fuses of any descrip- 
tion, the only means of obtaining light being from the 
tinder box. This consisted of a flat round box of brass 
or iron containing tinder made of charred linen or cot- 



14 ENGLAND 

ton rags, which after much striking of the flint ignited 
a spHnter of wood dipped in sulphur. 

Postmen deHvered letters and at the same time col- 
lected the money for nonpaid letters, for there were 
no postage stamps and no letter boxes. ^ The country 
mail was carried to its various destinations on horse- 
back or in mail coaches. Shops were of necessity 
wretchedly lighted, plate glass was unknown, and 
the limited wares in tradesmen's windows were ex- 
posed behind small panes of very comrhon glass. 
Coffee houses abounded and much business was trans- 
acted at them in the daytime and much social inter- 
course in the evening. Many of them provided sleep- 
ing accommodations and meals to all comers, while 
cook shops were to be found in every part of the 
town. 

Nineteenth-century costumes were as varied and 
curious as they had been before that period. Soldiers 
and sailors wore pigtails ; men of mark wore " Jean de 
Bry " coats, well padded at the shoulders and made 
short in the waist in order to show the startling waist- 
coat beneath it. The fast men of the period wore 
fancy tail-coats, white satin waistcoats, frill shirts, 
neck cloths, cassimere breeches with white satin knee- 
ribbons, and top boots ; beaver hats, powdered heads 
— for which a tax had to be paid — and a quizzing 
glass dangling on the breast. Occasionally a peruke 
might be met with, and snufif-boxes still existed, many 
of them beautifully decorated with precious stones. 
This brief and cursory glance at some aspects of 



ENGLAND 15 

the old-time social life of England, will help us to more 
fully realize the wonderful progress made in the course 
of one hundred years and to dimly appreciate the 
struggle which has evolved Imperial England from 
such a slough of misery, wretchedness, and wicked- 
ness as existed at the dawn of the nineteenth century .a 



CHAPTER II 

THE MARCH OF EVENTS 

IT will be both interesting and instructive to consider 
some of the steps in the march of nineteentn-cen- 
tury progress. 

The idea of a revolution in the postal system had 
its origin, according to a story told by Miss Marti- 
neau, thus : — " Coleridge, when a young man, was 
walking through the Lake district, when he one day 
saw the postman deliver a letter to a woman at a cot- 
tage door. The woman turned it over and examined 
it, and then returned it, saying she could not pay the 
postage, which was one shilling. Hearing that the 
letter was from her brother, Coleridge paid the postage, 
in spite of the manifest unwillingness of the woman. 
As soon as the postman was out of sight, she showed 
Coleridge how his money had been wasted as far as 
she was concerned. The sheet was blank. There was 
an agreement between her brother and herself that as 
long as all went well with him he should send a blank 
sheet in this way once a quarter; and she thus had 
tidings of him without expense of postage. Many 
persons would have remembered this incident only as 
a curious story to tell ; but there was one mind which 
wakened up at once to a sense of the significance of 
the fact. It struck Mr. Rowland Hill that there must 
be something wrong in a system which drove a brother 

16 



ENGLAND 17 

and sister to cheating, in order to gratify their desire 
to hear of each other's welfare. 

In his childhood Rowland Hill suffered from a 
spinal complaint, and as he lay on the floor of his 
home at Kidderminster, he used to amuse himself by 
counting until the numbers sometimes amounted to 
hundreds of thousands. His first start in life was as 
a teacher of mathematics; later he co-operated with 
Edward Gibbon Wakefield m his Colonial scheme and 
in aiding the work of the Society for the Diffusion of 
Useful Knowledge. When, therefore, he heard the 
story told by Coleridge it fell upon prepared ears, and 
he determined to see what he could do to rectify the 
abuses in the existing postal system. He found that 
letter-writing was the luxury of the rich, the cost of 
postage being prohibitive to the poor. Members of 
Parliament could send a limited number of their own 
or friends' letters free of charge by franking them ; 
members of the government could frank any number 
of letters and send them free of charge; and as the 
friends of these men in high places were mostly well- 
to-do people, they had the privilege which the poor so 
much more needed. In innumerable details, he found 
the> existing system full of errors of principle, and as 
facts accumulated he set to work to oppose it, hip and 
flank. It was a difficult task; the information he re- 
quired was not easy to obtain ; he had to form public 
opinion, and what was harder work still, to oppose 
officials who hated the idea of departmental reform. 
In 1837 he issued a pamphlet entitled *' Post-Office 



18 ENGLAND 

Reform; Its Importance and Practicability," in which 
he showed that the state habitually overcharged the 
public; that where a shilling was demanded, less than 
a penny was all that was needed to meet the outlay 
and expense ; he argued that the sender and not the re- 
ceiver should pay the postage — a thing never before 
dreamed of ; that weight, and not the number of pages 
written, should regulate the cost of transit, and that a 
uniform charge of one penny should be the rate of 
postage throughout the United Kingdom. 

This pamphlet raised a storm of opposition in the 
post-office, and in many unexpected quarters. Lord 
Litchfield, the postmaster-general, spoke of the scheme 
in the House of Lords, and said that " of all the wild 
and extravagant schemes he had ever heard, this was 
the wildest and most extravagant ; " two members of 
the House of Commons took an opposite view and sup- 
ported Rowland Hill through thick and thin. 

A committee was appointed to inquire into the con- 
dition of the post-office, and long and harassing exami- 
nations were undergone by Mr. Hill, who was, how- 
ever, so well fortified with damning facts that the 
committee reported in favor of his plans. Petitions in 
favor of the scheme had been sent in from all quar- 
ters, and public interest had been so warmly excited 
that a resolution was carried by a majority of one 
hundred and two, and the bill for giving it effect sub- 
sequently passed without a division. On the 10th of 
January, 1840, the penny-postal system came into 
force. 



ENGLAND 19 

Two important questions were settled in the early 
forties, one marking an epoch in the history of Par- 
liamentary procedure, the other affecting the inter- 
ests of all the literary men. 

In 1839, Messrs. Hansard, the Parliamentary 
printers and publishers, issued a report of the commis- 
sioners appointed to inquire into' the state of prisons, 
in which report it was alleged that many of the prison- 
ers were found reading certain obscene books pub- 
lished by one J. J. Stockdale. Stockdale at once 
started an action in the Queen's Bench against 
Messrs. Hansard for libel, and claimed $100,000 dam- 
ages. It was pleaded that the reports were pub- 
lished under the authority of the House of Commons, 
but the Lord Chief Justice held that the authority of 
Parliament was supreme, but not the authority of the 
House of Commons singly. A jury was summoned 
to assess damages and $500 was awarded to Stock- 
dale. This decision was upheld by the Law Courts, 
while the House of Commons stood up resolutely for 
its privileges. 

A further action was brought by Stockdale against 
Messrs. Hansard in the same year claiming $250,000 
damages, and the under sheriff before whom the case 
was heard, awarded $3,000 damages. Messrs. Han- 
sard then appealed to the House of Commons for pro- 
tection from penalties incurred in carrying out its or- 
ders, and the sheriffs of London, who had been or- 
dered to seize and sell some of the property of the 
Hansards and had delayed doing so, were summoned 



20 ENGLAND 

to appear on the 17th of January, 1840, before the 
Court of the Queen's Bench to show cause why they 
had failed in this respect. To put an end to the 
troublesome and undignified contest. Lord John Rus- 
sell brought in a bill (March 30, 1840) "to afford 
full protection to all persons employed in the publi- 
cation of Parliamentary papers." This excellent meas- 
ure passed into law on the 14th of April and has 
worked without further difficulty. It was a law im- 
peratively required, for the abolition of the slave 
trade, factory legislation, and other philanthropic 
movements which demanded the exposure of cruel- 
ties and abuses, could never have been carried out 
without it. Since 1840 the publication of Parliamen- 
tary reports has not been hampered, and any and 
every question has been made known without re- 
straint and without fear or favor, a privilege that has 
been very beneficially used. 

The second question, affecting the interests of all 
literary men, related to copyright. Blackstone says, 
" When a man by the exertion of his rational powers 
has produced an original work, he seems clearly to 
have a right to dispose of that identical work as he 
pleases, and any attempt to vary the disposition he has 
made of it, appears to be an invasion of the right." It 
is generally supposed that a common-law right of 
copyright existed in England long before there was 
any statute on the subject. Certain it is that in the 
reign of Queen Anne, an act was passed providing that 
the authors of books already printed, and those claim- 



ENGLAND 21 

ing under the author, should have the sole right and 
liberty of printing them for a term of twenty-one 
years and no longer; and that the authors of books 
to be printed, and their assigns, should have the same 
right for fourteen years and no longer, and after the 
expiration of those fourteen years, the same right 
should return to the authors, if living, for another 
fourteen years. This act was supplemented by an- 
other, which considerably extended the period. '* Sir 
Walter Scott had lately departed amid pecuniary dif- 
ficulties and distresses with which the whole nation 
sympathized. The sale of his works was the only 
resource left to his family; and the copyright of the 
most important and profitable of them, the " Waverley 
Novels," would shortly expire, unless the Legislature 
interposed to prolong its duration. Wordsworth, 
now just beginning to obtain the tardy recognition of 
his genius, was likely to have the harvest which that 
genius was about to reap, snatched from him by the 
same cause. Southey, who was in a similar position, 
had been deterred from publishing a great work by 
the apprehension that the fruit of his labors would 
be gathered by some adventurous bookseller. Charles 
Dickens, now at the height of his reputation, was 
actively pressing the measure. But perhaps there 
was nothing that more influenced the House than a 
characteristic petition addressed to it by Thomas 
Carlyle. Out of all the agitation came the Talfourd 
Act, which was passed, and is the law which in the 
main has ever since regulated literary property 



22 ENGLAND 

throughout the British dominions, both stimulating 
that literary effort which was the glory of the cen- 
tury and securing to genius and effort the benefit of 
their work. 

In the first half of the century wonderful discov- 
eries and inventions succeeded one another with such 
rapidity that it is only possible to glance at a few 
of them without making any claim whatever to a 
comprehensive description. 

How to attain empire in the air, how to make 
aerial navigation possible, has for some centuries 
been a keen desire of men of science as well as of 
common showmen. The Brothers Montgolfier, in 
1783, ascended in a balloon from Versailles, and all 
France, from Louis XVI to the merest street boy, 
went crazy on the subject. In the same year Pilatre 
de Rozier projected a journey into cloudland, but the 
king opposed it and suggested that two condemned 
criminals should occupy the car. This so offended 
De Rozier that he told the king " it would not be 
right to show such honor to criminals," and the king 
yielding, De Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlande were 
the first to undertake a lengthened journey, fol- 
lowed, still in that year, by others, who reached a 
height of ten thousand feet in a balloon filled with 
hydrogen gas. In the following year the craze ex- 
tended to England. In 1812, James Sadler at- 
tempted to cross the English Channel, but his bal- 
loon dropped into the sea, and the captain of a pass- 
ing vessel found that the only way in which he could 



ENGLAND 23 

rescue the aeronaut was to run his bowsprit smartly 
through the balloon. It was not till 1836 that defi- 
nite journeys were attempted, when Mr. Green, who 
made over 1300 ascents in all, succeeded in crossing 
the Channel, and landing in the heart of Germany 
after a journey of five hundred miles in eighteen 
hours. 

For a long time the balloon was of little prac- 
tical use, until Mr. Glaisher devoted years of study 
to make it serviceable, and has left a remarkable 
volume containing the results of his observations. 
On one occasion he ascended to a height of thirty- 
seven thousand feet, or upward of seven miles, two 
miles higher than the highest mountain in the world, 
within the space of one hour. Since Glaisher's day 
aerostation has been a worthy science. 

In 1839 M. Daguerre's '* new invention for tak- 
ing pictures " was publicly exhibited in Paris, by 
order of the Minister of the Interior. The first ex- 
periment in England was made only six days later, 
when M. St. Croix exhibited the instrument and proc- 
ess in the presence of a select party of scientific meui 
and artists, and succeeded in producing a picture of 
the place of meeting. Of the many marvelous dis- 
coveries of the century, photography is entitled in 
many respects to take its rank among the most re- 
markable. It does not, perhaps, produce the same 
practical effects upon the social condition of the 
human race that the steam-engine and electric tele- 
graph have done, nor does it bring such mitigation 



24 ENGLAND 

to human suffering as the discovery of chloroform 
— although one of its latest developments, the X or 
Roentgen rays, has greatly assisted surgery ; — but it 
occupies a unique position in the perfect novelty of 
its results, and their more direct connection with 
the world of mind. An American philosopher, Pro- 
fessor Hitchcock, advanced the theory that the 
scenes that passed upon this earth thousands of years 
ago have not really perished; but that the waves of 
light which left the earth then are still vibrating in 
illimitable space, and might even now be striking, in 
some far-off fixed star, an eye sensitive enough to 
discern them. Be that as it may, the practical value 
of photography in a thousand varied forms is un- 
questionable. Let one amusing instance suffice. In 
the early days of photography a thief bethought him- 
self that it would be a good speculation in his way 
of business to steal one of a photographer's lenses, 
a kind of booty that would pay as well as a couple of 
dozen spoons. Accordingly he went in to have his 
portrait taken, duly sat for it, and when the photog- 
rapher retired to develop the plate, he walked off 
with his plunder in his pocket. Unluckily he had 
not reflected upon the consequences of the few seconds 
he had spent in front of the lens he coveted. 
The photographer had obtained a good likeness of 
him and the means of identifying him were, of 
course, speedily placed in the hands of the police, to 
his great discomfiture. 

He would be a rash man who would volunteer to 



ENGLAND 25 

name the greatest scientist of the nineteenth century, 
but among the inner circle of the great, Michael 
Faraday, the famous chemist, occupies one of the 
highest positions. He taught us so much that we fail 
to recognize how ignorant we were when he began 
his stupendous labors in 1829. He, following on 
the lines of Dalton, taught us the unity of nature; 
that all truth is but one; that all nature is the off- 
spring of concordant thought; that in nature there is 
no scale of great and small; that the region of phy- 
sical science and the region of chemical science are 
one. '' The region of Faraday's discoveries, which 
entitle him to the gratitude of the human race, is 
mainly that mid-region between exact physical 
science and empirical chemistry. His great theorem 
is this: The things which seem so different are 
the same under different aspects ; and the forces of 
matter which seem so opposite are but the same 
forces acting under different conditions; one mat- 
ter, one force, one law, in infinite variety of devel- 
opment." That was an important day in the his- 
tory of scientific discovery when at a meeting of the 
Council of the Royal Institution (Nov. 5, 1845), 
Mr. Faraday announced a discovery tending to show 
that light, heat, and electricity are merely modifica- 
tions of one great universal principle. He did not 
contribute largely to the inventions which controlled 
the laws he had discovered ; he threw broadcast preg- 
nant seeds of truth into the minds of men ready to 
cultivate them for human convenience. " It was 



26 ENGLAND 

enough for him when he fathomed the secrets of 
nature, and dragged out of the recesses of nature a 
divine and luminous thought. Faraday was one of 
a small band who added to our scientific knowledge 
a whole continent of truth, who have done for the 
future peace and wealth of the nation more than 
conquerors of kingdoms or heroes of battlefields." 

The impetus given by Faraday and others to 
the study of electricity produced some marvelous 
inventions for its practical application. In 1837 the 
first electric telegraph was constructed on the 
Blackwell Railway, and step by step it came into 
general use, until in 1851 there was laid down the 
first submarine electric telegraph connecting Eng- 
land with France. To-day " there are no less than 
fourteen lines across the Atlantic, while all the other 
oceans have been electrically bridged so that mes- 
sages can be sent to almost any part of the globe 
at a speed which far surpasses the imaginary power 
of Shakespeare's goblin Puck, who boasted that he 
" could put a girdle round about the earth in forty 
minutes." 

Progress in engineering science went on apace 
during the second quarter of the century, and dar- 
ing deeds were done which seemed little short of 
miraculous. Let one example suffice: On the pier 
at Sunderland was a lighthouse ; the sea made a 
breach in the pier, and the pier had to be lengthened. 
To accomplish this it was requisite either to take 
the lighthouse down or to carry it a distance of four 



ENGLAND 27 

hundred and seventy-five feet, to a spot one foot, 
seven inches higher, at the end of the new pier, and 
it was necessary to carry it round a corner; a task 
frbm which the mightiest genie tof oriental fable 
might have shrunk appalled, but the work was 
done. 

In 1845 there was great excitement in naval and 
military circles, consequent upon Professor Schon- 
bein's experiments with his gun cotton before the 
chairman of the East India Company and a number 
of scientific persons. A rifle charged with fifty- 
four and one-half grains of gunpowder sent a ball 
through seven boards, each half an inch in thick- 
ness, at a distance of forty yards ; the same gun, 
charged with forty grains of the cotton, sent the 
ball into the eighth board ; and with a fresh rifle 
the ball was sent through the eighth board at 
ninety yards. This was the beginning of a series 
of inventions and discoveries for destroying human 
life which has gone on without interruption: to the 
present day. 

At the same time the experiments for destroying 
life were in progress, the medical world was inter- 
esting itself in new methods for preserving it and 
for subduing pain. In November, 1846, a great 
stir was occasioned by the publication of a letter in 
the public press written from Boston, U. S. A., re- 
garding the discovery of sulphuric ether. One of 
the first to make use of it was James Young Simp- 
son, of Edinburg, one of the first physicians of his 



28 ENGLAND 

day, and he soon became convinced that other ther- 
apeutic agents might be employed with even better 
success. He succeeded in introducing chloroform, a 
fluid discovered and described at nearly the same 
time by Soubeiran and Liebig. It seems incredible, 
but nevertheless it was a fact, that Simpson was 
strongly opposed on almost all sides. The public 
press charged him with putting a premium on crime 
by his discoveries, that assassination would become 
of daily occurrence, and that it would be applied to 
every criminal purpose. Others affirmed that the 
inhalation of chloroform produced so strong a sem- 
blance of death that victims would be daily buried 
alive. The strongest opposition of all came from 
the religious public, who declared that it was in di- 
rect opposition to Scripture " to avoid one part of 
the primeval curse on woman," and from pulpit 
after pulpit it was denounced as '' impious." Simp- 
son wrote some strong pamphlets in defense of the 
blessing he had brought into use. " My opponents 
forget," he said, " the twenty-first verse of the second 
chapter of Genesis. There is the record of the 
first surgical operation ever performed, and that 
text proves that the Maker' of the Universe, before 
he took the rib from Adam's side, caused a deep 
sleep to fall on Adam." Simpson was on the win- 
ning side and the greatest battle of science ever 
fought against human suffering was won. Chloro- 
form was administered to the queen, practitioner 



ENGLAND 29 

after practitioner adopted it, and Simpson lived to 
see the blessing acknowledged and in almost uni- 
versal use.^ 



CHAPTER III 

IMPROVEMENTS IN SOCIAL CONDITIONS 

WE will now turn to events relating more imme- 
diately to the social life of the country. Duel- 
ling was in full force during the early years of the 
queen's reign, and it was one of the first subjects to 
which the prince consort turned his serious atten- 
tion.- He proposed that 'quarrels between gentle- 
men should be settled by the arbitration of Courts 
of Honor, and although he was not able to carry 
out his scheme his personal influence did much to 
suppress the foolish and degrading practice. Public 
feeling was aroused, and in the following year the 
War Office issued articles on the subject, declar- 
ing " that it is suitable to the character of honor- 
able men to apologize and offer redress for wrong, 
or insult committed, and equally so for the party 
aggrieved to accept frankly and cordially explana- 
tions and apologies for the same." This important 
declaration gave the death blow to duelling in al- 
most its last stronghold, thc' army. 

In 1836 a most beneficial law was passed in the 
interests of prisoners accused of felony. Hith- 
erto a felon had never been allowed to have counsel 
to defend him. Although the prosecution might 
be carried on by the ablest advocates at the bar, the 
defendant — perhaps a poor ignorant man who did 

30 



ENGLAND 31 

not know how to put a sentence together — was 
compelled to plead his own cause. Two bills to 
abolish this injustice had been thrown out by the 
House of Lords, but in 1836 the new bill happily 
fell into the hands of Lord Lyndhurst and was suc- 
cessfully passed. 

Another humane act passed in 1836 was to abol- 
ish the law that had up to that time been in force, 
which required that persons convicted of murder 
should be executed the day but one after their con- 
viction, unless that day happened to be a Sunday, 
in which case they would be executed on the Mon- 
day. In the interval between the sentence and its 
execution they were to be fed on bread and water, 
and no person was to have access to them except 
the gaoler, the chaplain, and the surgeon. The old 
statute containing these provisions was repealed; 
a much longer period was allowed to elapse between 
the conviction and the execution, the relatives and 
friends were allowed to visit the condemned person, 
and many lives have been spared from the utmost 
penalty of the law in consequence of that extended 
interval. 

A bill for the abolition of imprisonment for 
debts under a certain sum, received the royal assent 
by commission on the 9th of August, 1844, and 
came into operation the day following, when several 
persons who had been confined in prison for debts 
below that amount were set at liberty. It was not 
until 1869 that an act for the entire abolition of im- 



32 ENGLAND 

prisonment for debt ' — coupled with a retention 
of imprisonment for fraudulent and certain other 
kinds of debts — was passed, after having been 
called for in vain for many years. 

In 1839 Rev. Theobald Mathew, popularly 
known as " Father Mathew " organized a temper- 
ance crusade on a scale never before attempted. 
He already exercised a powerful influence over the 
Irish people for his fame in organizing an institu- 
tion in Cork on the model of the Society of St. 
Vincent de Paul, for visiting the sick and dis- 
tressed, and when a temperance society was organ- 
ized in that city, he became its president and threw 
himself into the work with such astonishing energy 
that in a few months he obtained 150,000 adherents 
in Cork alone. He organized great temperance 
demonstrations at Limerick. On one of the days 
the crush of the people was so immense that the 
cavalry, called out to preserve order, were swept off 
the ground. Thousands were anxious to even touch 
the hem of his garment. At Nenagh 20,000 persons 
took the pledge in one day, and 100,000 in Gal way 
in two days. After making a royal progress 
through the west of Ireland^ the " Irish Apostle of 
Temperance " came across to London, where he 
created almost as great a sensation as in his na- 
tive land. He administered the pledge at various 
meetings in and about London, and on the 23rd of 
August, 1843, visited Greenwich and was received 
by about 20,000 persons on Blackheath. His serv- 



ENGLAND 33 

ices in the cause of religion and humanity were rec- 
ognized by the state and a pension was granted him 
from the civil list. He died in 1856. This great 
crusade had many of the characteristics of a re- 
ligious revival and may be ascribed to that myste- 
rious sympathetic influence by which it is well 
known that whole communities have often been 
swayed, but which can not well be defined. Period- 
ically, since the days of Father Mathew, similar 
crusades have been started, have been carried on 
with wild enthusiasm, and have died a natural 
death. 

In a filthy and disreputable part of London, 
known as Field Lane, but popularly as " Jack 
Ketch's Warren," from the largeness of its an- 
nual contribution to the gallows, a little band of 
men, mostly poor and all apparently uninfluential, 
opened a school in 1841 for the benefit of the 
waifs and strays, the vagabonds and outcasts, of 
that unsavory neighborhood. It was named the 
" Field Lane Sabbath School." Charles Dickens 
visited it and has thus described his visit : " I found 
the school in an obscure place called West Street, 
Saffron Hill, pitifully struggling for life under every 
disadvantage. It had no means; it had no suitable 
rooms ; it derived no power or protection from being 
recognized by any authority; it attracted within its 
walls a fluctuating swarm of faces, young in years but 
youthful in nothing else, that scowled hope out of 
countenance. It was held in a low-roofed den, in a 



34 ENGLAND 

sickening atmosphere, in the midst of taint and dirt and 
pestilence, with all the deadly sins let loose howling and 
shrieking at the doors. Zeal did not supply the place 
of method and training ; the teachers knew little of their 
office ; the pupils, with an evil sharpness, found them 
out, got the better of them, derided them, made 
blasphemous answers to Scriptural questions, sang, 
fought, danced, robbed each other, and seemed pos- 
sessed of legions of devils. The place was stormed 
and carried over and over again; the lights were 
blown out, the books strewn in the gutters, and the 
female scholars carried off triumphantly to their 
old wickedness. With no strength in it but its pur- 
pose, the school stood it all out and made its way. 
Some two years since, I found it quiet and orderly, 
full, lighted with gas, well whitewashed, numerously 
attended, and thoroughly established." 

The example set by the good laymen who opened 
the school in West Street was followed by others, 
and in Westminster, Whitechapel, Camberwell, and 
other places notorious for disreputableness, filth, 
and crime there were set up other " Ragged Schools " 
— the name was given by Charles Dickens — and 
great success attended them." 

It soon became evident that instead of having 
separate and independent schools in different local- 
ities to deal with the great problems that each 
school had to face, it would be wiser to have 
some federation — some headquarters — where all-im- 



ENGLAND 35 

portant questions could be discussed and united ac- 
tion taken. So one night in 1844 a band of forty 
superintendents and teachers, called together by one 
Mr. R. S. Starey, met in a hay loft over a cowshed 
in the center of what was then known as the Rook- 
ery of St. Giles, and then and there they formed 
themselves into the now world-known Ragged 
School Union. A few months later the philan- 
thropic Lord Ashley was elected president of the 
Union, an office he retained till the end of his life 
in 1885. Within ten years the committee of the 
West Street School, which was typical of dozens 
of others that were brought within the Union, were 
able to report that they had established " a free 
day school for infants ; an evening school for 
youths and adults engaged in daily occupation; a 
woman's evening school for improving character and 
extending domestic usefulness, thereby making better 
mothers and more comfortable homes; industrial 
classes, to teach youths tailoring and shoemaking; 
employment in the shape of wood chopping, as an 
industrial test for recommendation to situations; a 
home for boys when first engaged in places, apart 
from unwholesome contamination; a night refuge 
for the utterly destitute; a clothing society for the 
naked; a distribution of bread to the starving; baths 
for the filthy ; a room to dry clothes worn in the rain 
during the day; Bible classes under voluntary teach- 
ing, through which nearly ten thousand persons of 
all ages, but of one class — all in a state of physical 



36 ENGLAND 

and spiritual destitution — heard set forth the 
glad tidings of salvation; various prayer-meetings, 
quarterly conferences for committee and teachers 
for minute examination into the detailed working of 
the institution; a school missionary to supply the 
spiritual wants of the sick, to scour the streets, to 
bring youthful wanderers to the school, and to rescue 
fallen females from paths of sin; and a Ragged 
Church for the proclamation of the Gospel and the 
worship of God." This was a goodly program, but 
it set forth only one aspect of the gigantic work 
these good people undertook. They had in course 
of time to deal with questions that led to important 
legislation ; and anyone who walks in the streets of 
London to-day, remembering the state of things half 
a century ago, can see for himself what wonderful 
reforms they initiated. 

Springing out of the labors of the Ragged School 
Union were movements and enterprises that have 
effected an enormous amount of good. As the 
Union came more and more into public favor ques- 
tions of legislation were brought forward, and steps 
were taken to provide for the voluntary emigration 
of certain young persons of both sexes who had been 
educated in the schools, while the Youthful Offend- 
ers Bill and other legislative enactments were instru- 
mental in reducing crime, which during the past 
thirty or forty years had decreased no less than sev- 
enty-five per cent. 

In 1850 the Protestant spirit of England was 



ENGLAND 37 

profoundly stirred. On the 24th of September, the 
Pope issued a bull abolishing the administration of 
Roman Catholics in England by Vicars Apostolic, 
and appointing instead two archbishops and twelve 
bishops with territorial districts distinctly marked 
out. Dr. Wiseman was created the first Archbishop 
of Westminster and was raised to the dignity of a 
cardinal, and in this capacity he sent to England the 
notorious pastoral, dated " From out of the Flaminian 
Gate at Rome," a document which inflamed the 
Protestant fervor of the country a hundredfold 
more than a papal bull. Writing as though England 
had been restored to the Romish communion and 
ignoring the English Church and its episcopate, he 
said, " The great work is complete. What you 
have long desired and prayed for is granted. Your 
beloved country has received a place among the fair 
churches, which, normally constituted, form the 
splendid aggregate of Catholic communion. Catho- 
lic England has been restored to its orbit in the 
ecclesiastical firmament from which its light had long 
vanished." 

This was more than English Protestants could 
stand; for some time past papal encroachments had 
been regarded with great disquietude; the Oxford 
Movement had resulted in the secession of Newman 
and other distinguished clergymen and laymen to the 
Church of Rome, and the expectation that England 
woud go back to the darkness of pre-Reformation 
times, and follow the footsteps of these seceders to 



38 ENGLAND 

Rome, had been openly discussed both in London 
and in Rome. So the cry " No Popery ! " rang out 
through all the land. The prime minister, Lord 
John Russell, dealt some sturdy blows at his Tracta- 
rian foes, and in the famous letter written to the 
Bishop of Durham, known as the " Durham letter," 
he denounced the recent measures of the pope. Pub- 
lic meetings denouncing the papal aggression were 
held throughout the country and petitions were 
adopted calling upon the government and Legislature 
to interfere. The queen, in her own gracious and 
kindly words, has left on record her opinions and 
feelings on the subject. Writing to the Duchess of 
Gloucester, she said, " I could never have consented 
to anything which breathed a spirit of intolerance. 
Sincerely Protestant as I have always been and al- 
ways shall be, and indignant as I am at those who 
call themselves Protestants, while they are, in fact, 
quite the contrary, I much regret the unchristian and 
intolerant spirit exhibited by many people at the 
public meetings. I can not bear to hear the vio- 
lent abuse of the Catholic religion, which is so pain- 
ful and cruel toward the many good and innocent 
Roman Catholics. However, we must hope and trust 
this excitement will soon cease, and that the whole- 
some effect of it upon our own church will be last- 
ing." 

Some idea of the ferment may be gathered from 
the fact that between the 14th and the 30th of No- 
vember, no fewer than seventy-eight works on the 



ENGLAND 39 

papal aggression were issued from the press. On the 
7th of February, 1851, the premier introduced a bill 
** to prevent the assumption by the Roman Catholics 
of certain ecclesiastical titles taken from any place 
within the United Kingdom," which subsequently be- 
came a law. Twenty years afterward the act was re- 
pealed, although the illegality of the titles was again 
explicitly affirmed. 

The year 1848 was marked by revolutions in al- 
most every capital of Europe; thrones were upset, 
dynasties collapsed, the whole continent was thrown 
into confusion and alarm; and every state was con- 
vulsed by violent popular conflicts with the authori- 
ties. In France, where the great agitation com.- 
menced, Louise Philippe, after reigning successfully as 
a constitutional monarch, came into collision with 
the people on the question of Parliamentary reform. 
On the 24th of February the third French Revolu- 
tion broke out in Paris, and the king abdicated, fled 
in terror from his capital, and came a fugitive to 
England. A republic was established, of which 
Louis Napoleon, the nephew of Napoleon I, was 
afterward elected president. In England and Bel- 
gium alone there was comparative quiet, although 
much anxiety was felt in England. The Chartist 
Movement culminated and collapsed; the rebellion in 
Ireland, headed by Smith O'Brien, was confined to 
a " scrimmage in a cabbage garden" and ended in the 
conviction of the ringleaders and their sentence to 
transportation. And thus England weathered the 



40 ENGLAND 

storm that overthrew and shattered so many foreign 
states. After the storm there came a cahn, and with 
the calm came a hopeful and joyous spirit in Eng- 
land that found its best expression in the determina- 
tion to gather together all the nations of the world 
in friendly competition in the arts of peace, at a 
great international exhibition, which was held in 
London in 185 L 

Up to the year 1856 no English sovereign, it is 
said, ever decorated an Englishman for being brave. 
France had its Legion of "Honor, instituted by Na- 
poleon I in 1802 when he was First Consul — a mili- 
tary and civil order established for the purpose 
of recognizing distinguished services whether by 
Frenchmen or foreigners. During the Crimean War 
Queen Victoria observed the anomaly of the soldiers 
of the two nations fighting side by side, some with 
the highly-coveted Legion of Honor on their breasts, 
and others without any special decoration, and she 
instituted by royal warrant on the 29th of January, 
1856, the " Order of the Victoria Cross " for soldiers 
and sailors of any rank for a single act of bravery in 
the presence of the enemy. The decoration carries 
with it a pension of about- fifty dollars yearly for 
each noncommissioned officer and private, with a 
further annuity of twenty-five dollars for every ad- 
ditional bar, such bar being added upon each fresh 
act of bravery equal to the first. 

One of the most interesting functions over which 
Her Majesty ever presided was on the 26th of June, 



ENGLAND 41 

1857, when thousands upon thousands of people as- 
sembled in Hyde Park to witness her fasten with her 
own hands the decoration on the breasts of sixty-one 
Crimean heroes of all ranks and ages. Forty-seven 
were given to the army, twelve to the navy, and two 
to the marines. This cross links all men together; 
" it stands as a symbol of the highest that man can 
attain, it places the hearts and the generous im- 
pulses of all men on a common level, and the words 
" For Valour " are as dear to the noble duke as to 
the humblest unlettered private." 

In the field of philanthropy the greatest activity 
prevailed ; and many harvests were gathered in from 
seed sown in the earlier half of the century. The 
claims of children employed in brickfields were for 
many years advocated by an eccentric and enthusias- 
tic philanthropist, George Smith of Coalville, whose 
persistency at last obtained legislation on their be- 
half. His own early experience in life had been in 
the brickfields, and he once wrote : " At nine years 
of age, my employment consisted in continually 
carrying aboiit forty pounds of clay upon my head 
froni the clay heap to the table on which the bricks 
were made. When there was no clay I had to carry 
the same weight of bricks. This labor had to be 
performed almost without intermission, for thir- 
teen hours daily. Sometimes my labors were in- 
creased by my having to work all night at the kilns. 
On one occasion I had to perform a very heavy 
amount of labor. After my customary day's work I 



42 ENGLAND 

had to carry twelve hundred nine-inch bricks from 
the maker to the floors on which they are placed to 
harden. The total distance thus walked by me 
that night was not less than fourteen miles ; the 
total quantity of clay thus carried by me was five 
and one-half tons. For all this labor I received 
6d ! " Success crowned the efforts of George Smith 
to procure legislation, and on the 1st of Janu- 
ary, 1872, thousands of little white slaves were set 
free by the coming into force of an act prohibiting 
any female under sixteen or child under ten, from 
being employed in the manufacture of bricks and 
tiles. 

Lord Shaftesbury was still continuing his labors 
on behalf of the poor and oppressed in general and 
children in particular. An act for regulating the 
labor of juveniles in workshops was passed, and an- 
other dealing with the iniquitous system of '* agri- 
cultural gangs " — the first statutory recognition of 
the rights of rural children to have equal educational 
privileges with the children of the towns — swept 
from the face of the land the long series of evils in 
regard to the cruel employment of children that 
could be dealt with by industrial legislation. 

Among the greatest of social agitations was that 
for the housing of the poor. London was in a state 
of transformation, and sanitary scientists, in view 
of the herding together of enormous populations in 
the slums of Westminster, Holborn, and elsewhere, 
recommended the pulling down of the *' rookeries " 



ENGLAND 43 

that were the source of immense mischief to the 
health of London; and whole streets and in some 
cases almost whole districts were condemned. 
This raised the question of what was to be done 
for the accommodation of the working people who 
were to be dislodged, and for many years the ques- 
tion was before Parliament. Excellent results fol- 
lowed. The question of the dwellings of the poor 
passed from individual care to companies, speculative 
societies, and finally into the region of *' Imperial- 
ism," greatly assisted by organizations such as those 
originated by Sir Sidney Waterlow, Miss Octavia 
Hill, and others. Then came the great agitation of 
1883-4 when the Royal Commission on the housing 
of the poor was appointed with the Prince of Wales 
as its most active member, culminating in Lord Sal- 
isbury's act of 1885, " The Housing of the Working 
Class Act." 

A great impetus was given to the construction of 
model lodging-houses for the poor by Mr. George 
Peabody, an American merchant, who in March, 
1862, announced a gift to the poor of London of 
seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to be placed 
in the hands of trustees and to be applied at their 
discretion to the construction of improved dwellings 
for the poor, which should combine in the utmost 
possible degree the essentials of healthfulness, com- 
fort, social enjoyment, and economy. Subsequent 
gifts by this noble-minded philanthropist aggregated 
nearly $4,250,000. 



44 ENGLAND 

While these efforts were being made for the ac- 
commodation of the poor in London, similar efforts 
were in progress for accommodating laborers and 
other workingmen of the country adjacent to Lon- 
don. A great boon for assisting them to obtain 
healthful homes outside the metropolis was the Par- 
liamentary enactment, introduced by Lord Derby in 
1864, that on every railway leading into the metropo- 
lis provision should be made for the accommoda- 
tion of the working class by cheap trains.^ 



CHAPTER IV 

FURTHER REFORMS AND MORAL EFFORTS 

IN 1873 public feeling was much agitated by the 
revelations made by Mr. Samuel Plimsoll, as to 
the perils of the British seamen consequent upon the 
overloading of ships and the use of unseaworthy ves- 
sels. He first exposed the rotten condition of many 
of the coal-bearing coasters. In the six years pre- 
vious to his entering Parliament, as many as 6,357 
coasting vessels had been wrecked, with immense 
loss of life. This led to the large question of mer- 
chant shipping generally. Mr. Plimsoll gathered 
information from all sources and published in a book 
entitled " Our Seamen," a fierce denunciation of ship- 
owners, whom he described as little better than mur- 
derers. His revelations of the cranky coffin-ships, 
insured far above their value for the purpose of be- 
ing lost, stirred up the feeling of all right-minded 
people. The whole conscience of the country woke 
up. The immediate result of his efforts is best stated 
in his own words : " Under one short act passed in 
1875, confirmed and extended in 1876, nearly five 
hundred vessels, every one of them as rotten as a 
pear, were broken up." Among the many improve- 
ments that Plimsoll's efforts in Parliament procured 
were these : that ships are no longer overloaded as 
they were ; Board of Trade inspection has thinned out 

4 45 



46 ENGLAND 

the fleet of coffin-ships; the risks from shifting car- 
goes and piled-up deck loads are greatly reduced; 
the seaman's food is better; crimping is given short 
shrift; and the payment of seaman's wages has been 
put upon a better footing; over-insurance and un- 
der-manning can no longer be practiced with impu- 
nity. For these and other benefits the name of Sam- 
uel Plimsoll is honored and beloved by every sea- 
faring man. 

Trades-unions were regarded in the earlier half 
of the century with profound aversion by nearly all 
the employing and capitalist classes, and the high 
ground was taken that they were opposed to moral- 
ity no less than to sound principles of political econ- 
omy. But by degrees they came to be tolerated, then 
sanctioned, and afterward encouraged. When the 
workingmen found that these combinations gave 
them a giant's strength, at first they used it tyran- 
nously like a giant, and many outrages occurred 
which brought trades-unionism into very evil 
repute. In 1875, however, legislative measures 
placed masters and workmen on an absolute equality 
as regards all matters of contract, and established the 
principle that the right of a combination was iden- 
tical with the right of an individual, and that '' no 
combination of persons is to be deemed criminal if 
the act proposed to be done would not be criminal 
if done by one person." 

The period we have under consideration (1875- 
1900) was remarkable for the frequency of great 



ENGLAND 47 

strikes, and for the amount of public anxiety they 
occasioned. It would be tedious to tell their story 
in detail; they affected, at one time or another, al- 
most everybody in every branch of trade, and public 
interest or public anger was excited on behalf of 
many of them. So far and wide did the spirit of 
striking extend, that in October, 1889, there were 
strikes in several of the large towns by schoolboys, 
who demanded shorter hours, half holiday on Wed- 
nesday, no caning, and no homework! On the 1st 
of May, 1890, '' Labor Day " was instituted, when 
demonstrations took place in London and in most of 
the other European capitals, the chief object of the 
demonstrators being to urge the justice of an eight- 
hour day by legislative measures. 

We now turn to glance at some of the philan- 
thropic movements which have marked the period 
under review. Philanthropy entered upon a new 
stage ; it had already dealt with sanitary laws, the 
dwellings of the poor, the provision of suitable ele- 
mentary education, restriction in the hours of labor, 
inspection of mines, factories, and shops, and these 
had all passed from individual effort to important 
questions of imperial policy. Then there set in a 
new style of philanthropy, an endeavor to make the 
already improved homes more beautiful, to supply 
social enjoyments that should fill the larger number 
of hours of leisure, to make life more livable by culti- 
vating and improving the tastes of the people, to pro- 
vide more domestic and social comforts, and to turn 



48 ENGLAND 

the dreary monotony of unbroken dulness into a life 
of pleasantness. The erection of the first cab shelter 
in 1875 marks, to a certain extent, the dawn of this 
new philanthropy. 

The idea of sending the poor little waifs and 
strays of our great cities for " a day in the country," 
with whomsoever it originated, was an excellent 
one ; but the idea of establishing " Holiday Homes," 
where they could drink in fresh air for a week or a 
fortnight at a time and get accustomed to the sights 
and sounds of country life, was better. The move- 
ment took hold of the imagination of the richer 
dwellers of the great cities, and tens of thousands of 
little pale-faced children are now provided for an- 
nually in beautiful country places and by the sea- 
side. A further development of the movement has 
been the establishment of seaside and country camps 
for boys, which has given a great impetus to such 
useful societies as the Church Lads' Brigade, the 
Working Lads' Brigade, and other similar institu- 
tions. 

The preservation of open places, — *' lungs for 
London " and other large cities — has occupied the 
attention of philanthropists', and many important so- 
cieties have been formed for securing and maintain- 
ing them; generous bequests and costly gifts have 
been made of public parks, such as Waterlow Park 
at Highgate and Brockwell Park at Heme Hill, 
while the corporation of London has succeeded in 
securing for the use of Londoners forever, such de- 



ENGLAND 49 

lightful open spaces as Burnham Beeches and West 
Wickham Common. Playgrounds for children are 
now to be found close to the densely populated parts 
of our great cities, and the one at Wavertree in 
Liverpool, the gift of an anonymous donor, may be 
regarded as idealistic. In parts of Scotland a limited 
liability company began, in 1906, organized work 
to provide cheap and clean vacation outings and 
homes for poorly paid workers, and everywhere in 
the kingdom the impulse to befriend the poorer 
classes seems to be growing through many organized 
efforts. 

The question of small allotments of land for work- 
ingmen — mainly with a view of checking the de- 
population of the rural districts — has been dealt 
with by the Legislature, and has been taken up with 
enthusiasm in many places, with very beneficial re- 
sults in the majority of instances. 

The new philanthropy may be said to have cul- 
minated on the 14th of May, 1887, when Queen Vic- 
toria opened the People's Palace at Mile End. Mr. 
(afterward Sir) Walter Besant had applied himself 
to the discovery of a remedy for the deadly dulness 
and dreariness, the ignorance and the squalid pleas- 
ures, of the dwellers of the East End of London, and 
incorporated his views in a novel entitled " All Sorts 
and Conditions of Men," in which he drew a pic- 
ture of an ideal institution for the working classes. 
The idea struck home and the great People's Palace 
at Mile End was the practical realization of the 



50 ENGLAND 

novelist's dream. It was a bridge to cross the gulf 
that separated the lowly East from the aristocratic 
West in intellectual pleasures, in art, in knowledge, 
and in the love of the beautiful; and it placed music 
and painting, literature and science, and good 
healthy amusement within the reach of the people. 
The scheme has borne excellent fruit, and to its in- 
fluence may be traced the rise of popular polytechnic 
institutions now to be found in all of our great cities 
and suburbs, for affording opportunities of technical 
education and rational amusement. 

Of late years the early-closing movement has 
made rapid advancement ; provision has been made 
for the more comfortable accommodation of women 
workers in shops and warehouses ; establishments 
unknown in earlier days have been opened for the sale 
of cheap and wholesome meals ; the cost of travel for 
short distances on tram or omnibus has been lessened ; 
the means of procuring respectable lodgings in 
" flats " or " sets " have become almost universal ; 
and the craving for intellectual advancement has 
been satisfied by the institution of free libraries. 

One of the very best of the many philanthropic in- 
stitutions originated during, the latter part of the 
century, is the National Society for the Prevention of 
Cruelty to Children, founded by the Rev. Benjamin 
Waugh, in 1884. The early work of the society was 
greatly assisted by men of very diverse views, but of 
one heart, such as the Cardinal Archbishop of West- 
minster and Mr. Labouchere of Truth, Mr. Herbert 



ENGLAND 51 

Spencer and the Chief Rabbi Dr. Adler, — and its 
operations were open to Catholic and Protestant, Jew 
and Christian, on equal terms. One of its great 
achievements was to procure the passing of the act 
by which fundamental changes were made in the 
standing of English children, entitling them, as a 
civil right, to be clothed, fed, and properly treated ; to 
admission into courts ; to limited hours of labor ; to 
new guardianship when that was for their welfare; 
and to other great benefits never possessed before. 
The society became " the solicitor, chief constable, 
and public prosecutor for every child — the smallest 
and poorest in the land," and it has been instru- 
mental in affirming and establishing the rights of 
children in many thousands of cases. 

" Dr. Barnardo's Homes " have for many years 
excited and still excite great wonder and admira- 
tion. Five thousand orphan waifs are always being 
maintained, educated, and taught trades here; desti- 
tute children of any age, creed, sex, or nationality 
are eligible to the homes, and also those who are 
deaf or dumb, blind or crippled; lodging-houses and 
night refuges, with '' ever open doors," are accessible 
day and night to homeless waifs and strays ; techni- 
cal training in some one of the fourteen handicrafts 
carried on in the homes is given to every lad ca- 
pable of receiving it, and girls are carefully trained 
for domestic service. 

A closely related movement that has begun, and 
considering the larger brotherly feeling that is 



52 ENGLAND 

growing, is sure to extend, is the municipal pension 
idea. In 1907 Edinburg starts a system which will 
place on a pension list every employee of the munici- 
pality who becomes incapacitated after reaching the 
age of sixty years, the pension to be in proportion ac- 
cording to the employee's wages. 

Whatever opinion may be held with regard to the 
religious side of the operations of the Salvation Army, 
there can hardly be two opinions as to the enormous 
value of its philanthropic work. The Salvation Army 
began in 1865, when one man and his wife. General and 
Mrs. Booth, took up their stand as street-preachers 
on Mile End Green. Its progress was comparatively 
slow, and in 1877 there were only thirty corps, with 
thirty-six officers. By 1906 it had covered the world 
with its organizations; 7,210 corps were scattered 
over forty-nine different countries and colonies, with 
16,857 officers, cadets, and employees exclusively de- 
voted to the work, and many thousand non-com- 
missioned officers rendering voluntary service. 
From mere force of numbers the Salvation Army can 
not be ignored by any section of the community, 
either as an avowed spiritual organization, a philan- 
thropic agency, or a political influence. 

In 1890 General Booth published a remarkable 
book, entitled *' Darkest England, and the Way 
Out," in which he propounded a gigantic scheme in- 
tended to solve " the probler^ of the unemployed." 
The scheme was to consist *' in the formation of 
these people into self-helping and self-sustaining com- 



ENGLAND 53 

munities, each being a kind of co-operative society 
or patriarchal family, governed and disciplined on 
the principles which have already proved so effective 
in the Salvation Army." These communities were 
to be called " Colonies," and were to comprise : ( 1 ) 
The City Colony, — a number of institutions to act as 
Harbors of Refuge for all and any who have been 
shipwrecked in life, character, or circumstances. (2) 
The Farm Colony, — a settlement on an estate in the 
country, in the culture of which the '' colonists " 
would find employment and obtain support while 
the processes of reformation would be carried for- 
ward and a knowledge of agriculture acquired. (3) 
The Over-Sea Colony, — to be populated by those 
who had passed through the " city " and " farm " 
colonies and so " to lay the foundations, perchance, of 
another empire to swell the vast proportions in later 
times." To start the scheme Mr. Booth appealed 
for $500,000. The sum was readily obtained. Mr. 
Booth then announced that in order to carry on the 
scheme he must have $150,000 a year for the pur- 
pose. As the great undertaking has been continued 
to this day with ever-growing success, we may pre- 
sume that whatever he may ask for he will be sure to 
have. 

There are few who will deny that philanthropy 
never stood in a more erect and vigorous attitude 
than it does to-day ; there are few who will deny that 
the religious life of the people is less vigorous than 
in an earlier part of the century. Without en- 



54 ENGLAND 

broaching on the province of the preacher, and 
without any leaning to sectarianism, it may be said 
here, as a matter of observation of the " Hfe " of 
the century, that in rehgious affairs, form appears 
to be taking the place of power, outward service 
supplanting the inward spirituality, the religion of 
fashion ousting the religion of devotion, the out- 
ward and visible signs over-shadowing the inward 
and spiritual graces. 

The spirit of the Oxford Movement has spread 
in a thousand different' directions and developed 
into as many ramifications; the free Christian 
churches have become more united and therefore 
more powerful ; while efforts to revive the religious 
spirit have been as numerous as they have been 
phenomenal. In 1875, D. L. Moody and Ira D. 
Sankey commenced a series of " Revival Gather- 
ings " in the Agricultural Hall, Islington, and sub- 
sequently at Eton and at the Haymarket Theater. 
At the latter place the afternoon gatherings were at- 
tended by many of the aristocracy, and on one occasion 
by the Princess of Wales. These evangelists were 
unlettered men, without any theological training, not 
belonging to any denomination, yet thousands upon 
thousands of people of all degrees in station and mental 
culture flocked to hear them. It was a phenomenon. 
So also was the ministry of Charles Haddon Spur- 
geon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington 
Causeway, who died at Mentone on the 31st of Jan- 
uary, 1892. He and Cardinal Manning, both good 



ENGLAND 55 

men of exceptional spiritual gifts, died about the 
same time. They were the acid and the alkali that 
had created much of the religious effervescence of 
the times. Spurgeon detested popery, the theater, 
and the " higher criticism " with a perfect detesta- 
tion. In his latter days he considered that the 
church and the world were alike on the down grade, 
and he despaired of being able to do more than utter 
a protest against the tendency of the times. But he 
had rendered yeoman's service in his day, in his 
splendid stand for Protestantism, in his consistent 
proclamation of what he conceived to be the " Gos- 
pel," and in his noble-hearted philanthropy. He 
preached and printed thousands of sermons, and left 
behind him almost as many more, which have been 
circulated and eagerly read in every English-speak- 
ing land under the sun. 

A revision of the authorized version of the Bible 
of 1611 was mooted in Parliament as early as 1856, 
and was fully discussed by both Houses on convoca- 
tion in 1870, when it was resolved to form two com- 
panies of scholars, one for the revision of the author- 
ized version of the Old Testament, and one for the 
revision of the same version of the New Testament. 
Two committees of American scholars were also ap- 
pointed to act with the two English companies on 
the basis of the principles and rules drawn up by the 
Committee of Convocation. The work of revision 
of the whole Bible was commenced in 1870 and com- 
pleted in 1884. 



56 ENGLAND 

Great fears were entertained in certain quarters 
that a revised version of the Holy Scripture would 
create uncertainty in people's minds as to which was 
and which was not a true and reliable version, but 
these fears were dissipated on publication, and the 
popular verdict took this form: that the revised ver- 
sion was of little or no use to the unlearned masses, 
while to the learned few it was insufficient ; that it 
went too far in some places in interfering with the 
grand and simple beauty of the authorized version, 
and did not go far enough in criticism to make the 
giving up of the other worth while. 

We have already told the story of the main 
events in the political and national life of the nine- 
teenth century. 

Expansion of territory went on apace. In 1874 
the king of the Fiji Islands ceded his country to the 
British government, represented at the time by Sir 
Hercules Robinson, commanding the " Dido," and 
in February, 1875, the colony of Fiji was constituted 
and a governor appointed. In 1884 all the south- 
ern coasts of New Guinea were annexed, and 
in 1886, after the surrender of King Theebaw, 
Lord Dufferin proclaimed the annexation of Upper 
Burmah to the British Empire. In 1888 the flag 
was hoisted on the Harvey or Cook's Islands in the 
Pacific Sea, and in 1889 on the Suwarrow Islands. 
In 1890 the British government made an agreement 
with the German government defining the respective 
spheres of influence in Africa ; at the same time 



ENGLAND 57 

Heligoland was ceded to Germany and the protect- 
orate of Zanzibar granted to Great Britain. 

During the five years (from April, 1880, to June, 
1885) that Mr. Gladstone was premier, some im- 
portant measures were passed, notwithstanding that 
Irish questions and foreign affairs stood in the way 
of better things. The most important measure was 
the Reform Bill of 1884, for household suffrage in 
the counties, or, in other words, for the inclusion of 
the agricultural laborers by which the electorate of 
the United Kingdom was raised to over five mil- 
lions, and the number of members in the House of 
Commons was raised to 670. 

The two great leaders of the political world 
passed away during the period under consideration. 
On the 19th of April, 1881, Lord Beaconsfield went 
peacefully to his last rest, and was buried at Hugh- 
enden Church, near High Wycombe. His had been 
a dazzling career; he had charmed the world with 
his wit and wisdom, his romances and adventures, 
his daring successes and disastrous blunders, and 
there was great regret when he passed away. Mr. 
Gladstone survived Lord Beaconsfield for seventeen 
years. Although he withdrew from public life on 
the 1st of March, 1894, on the ground that advanc- 
ing years had deprived him of the physical strength 
that could have enabled him to defy the fatigue of 
Parliamentary duties, he maintained to the last the 
glorious strength and vigor of his great intellect, 
and the grandeur of his eloquence was undiminished. 



58 ENGLAND 

His industry never failed; from his retirement he 
watched and attempted to aid with his powerful pen 
the claims of Greece, the rights of Christians under 
Turkish rule, and *' all oppressed people rightfully 
struggling to be free." In the winter of 1897, vis- 
its to Cannes and Bournemouth failed to revive his 
declining strength; he returned to Hawarden, and 
died on the 19th of May, 1898 (Ascension Day), 
at the age of eighty-eight. Yielding to the demand 
of the nation, his family consented to the removal of 
his body to London, where, for two days, it lay in 
state in Westminster Hall, and on the 28th of May 
was interred in Westminster Abbey, two of the 
pall-bearers on the occasion being the Prince of 
Wales and Duke of York. 

When the nineteenth century began, the popula- 
tion of the United Kingdom was 16,345,646; at its 
close it was 40,921,371. The population of the rest 
of the British Empire was in 1800, 2,500,000; in 
1900, 256,000,000. The population of London in 
1800 was 959,000; in 1900, 4,546,752. The area of 
London in 1800 was barely 9^ square miles; at the 
close of the century the area of London comprised 
within the boundaries of the London County Council 
was 118 square miles. *' Greater London," practically 
non-existent at the beginning of the century, has now 
a population of 6,528,434. 

As regards the territory and population of the 
whole of the British Empire at the close of the cen- 
tury, the position is an altogether unprecedented 



ENGLAND ' 59 

one. A recent writer says : " Including Egypt, which 
is a veiled protectorate; the Soudan, which is openly, 
frankly, and directly under British control; and the 
Orange and Transvaal States, the British Empire 
at the century's end comprised an area of about 
13,000,000 miles and a population of about 440),- 
000,000. The Transvaal alone is as large as Great 
Britain and Ireland. Without Egypt and the old 
Egyptian Soudan, the combined area of which is 
equal to India, the British Empire is thrice the size 
of Europe. If, as is supposed, the population of the 
globe amounts to seventeen or eighteen millions, it 
follows that for material and moral welfare of every 
fourth human being in the world, the British Em- 
pire is in some form responsible." 

And now our review is done. We have told the 
story of the " life " of the most remarkable period of 
human history, the most wonderful of all the centu- 
ries, and have endeavored to trace the chief lines of 
human endeavor; the changes effected in science, in 
the arts, in all possibilities of human intercourse; 
the extension of knowledge and the progress of 
thought. In the retrospect of the nineteenth century 
there are many things still left to cause regret and 
fear; but the century closed with a glorious heritage 
of hope that progress will continue, that knowledge 
will grow from more to more, and that as 

" God's in His Heaven, 
All's right with the world." d 



CHAPTER V 

HOW ENGLAND IS GOVERNED 

WHOEVER now writes an exposition of the 
powers of the EngHsh government must ac- 
knowledge his obHgations to Mr. Walter Bagehot 
and Professor Thomas F. Moran, whose works are 
remarkable for their clear, illuminating, and authorita- 
tive qualities. Professor Moran has written so de- 
lightfully on this subject in his " Theory and Prac- 
tise of the English Government " that his ideas, often 
his own words, have been used in the preparation of 
this chapter. 

" ' England,' he says, ' has taken the lead in 
solving the problem of constitutional government; 
of government, that is, with authority, but limited by 
law, controlled by opinion, and respecting personal 
right and freedom. This she has done for the 
world, and herein lies the world's chief interest in 
her history.' These are the opening words of Gold- 
win Smith's recent and brilliant work, ' Tha 
United Kingdom.' These two sentences set forth 
admirably the great debt which the world owes to 
the English people. As we note the progress of 
civilization from its beginnings on the banks of the 
Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates, we are led to 
the conclusion that every nation has made its pecu- 
liar contribution to this progress. Each seems to 

60 



ENGLAND 61 

have contributed something to those forces which 
tend to civilize, — something to the general good ; 
and we of the present generation are the inheritors of 
these contributions. The Egyptians and the Chal- 
deans furnished the humble beginnings of literature, 
science, and art; the special mission of the Hebrews 
was to teach religion ; the Phoenicians were the mer- 
chants, navigators, and colonizers of the Orient; the 
Greeks excelled in art and the Romans in law. In 
like manner the solution of the problem of con- 
stitutional government has been the great contribu- 
tion of the English people to the world's civilization. 
It is true that England's achievements in agriculture, 
commerce, and manufacturing are of no mean order 
and have added much to the welfare of the race; 
yet her supreme contribution has been along govern- 
mental lines. 

An exposition of the English government 
must always be attended by difficulties not ex- 
perienced in a study of American government, be- 
cause the English constitrtion, unlike our own, is 
exceedingly extensive and largely unwritten. The 
American form of government is comprised in a 
definite number of articles and clauses, while that of 
England is made up of a series of great documents 
like the Magna Charta, scattered over centuries of 
time, of acts of Parliament, of decisions of courts, 
and of various customs which have slowly crystalized 
into the law of the land. These various component 
parts of the English Constitution have never been 



62 ENGLAND 

collected and reduced to writing and probably never 
will be. The labor of collecting and unifying these 
scattered fragments would be a stupendous task, and 
the work could never be complete even for a single 
day, as Acts of Parliament affecting the fundamental 
law of England would still continue to be passed, 
and the decisions of the courts would still constitute 
an uninterrupted stream. The American Constitution 
can be amended only in the two ways specified in 
the document itself, and changes in our fundamental 
law are by no means easy. ' In England, however, no 
such difficulties present themselves, as Parliament 
may alter any law with equal facility. As Sir Wil- 
liam R. Anson puts it, ' Our Parliament can make 
laws protecting wild birds or shell-fish, and with the 
same procedure could break the connection of church 
and state or give political power to two millions of 
citizens, and redistribute it among new constituen- 
cies.' When an Englishman says that a proposed 
measure is ' unconstitutional ' he means that it is 

* opposed to the spirit of the English Constitution,' but 
does not mean to say that it would be void if passed. 
When an American announces an Act of Congress 

* unconstitutional,' he means that it is opposed to the 
written Constitution of the United States and would 
be declared null and void in case it were tested in the 
courts. For these reasons the English Constitution 
is more variable and intangible than the American, and 
its exposition correspondingly more difficult. 

" The English government is usually classified by 



ENGLAND 63 

political scientists as a limited or constitutional mon- 
archy. While it is a monarchy in form, in reality it 
is what Bagehot denominated it a generation ago, — 
a * disguised republic' This is a fact not always 
appr,eciated to the fullest extent. There is a pop- 
ular misconception in some quarters in respect to 
the real nature of the English government; and this 
is particularly true in respect to the powers and pre- 
rogatives of the Crown. The idea prevails to some 
extent that the king or queen occupies the throne 
by hereditary right, and is the determining force in 
directing governmental affairs. As a matter of 
fact, however, the claim to the throne based on he- 
redity alone is not conclusive, and Parliament may 
constitutionally refuse at any time to recognize such 
a claim. This has been done in several instances. 
It is also true that the Crown at the present time 
has comparatively little direct participation in the 
government. The House of Commons, under the 
leadership of the Cabinet, is the real governing 
power. The time was when the Parliament was 
subservient to the Crown and subject to its dictation 
in most matters. This subserviency and submission 
are startlingly evident at times during the Tudor 
period. In modern times the power of the Crown 
has gradually decreased, while that of Parliament, 
or more properly speaking, of the House of Com- 
mons, has correspondingly increased. Since the 
revolution of 1688 the House of Commons has been 
practically supreme in the government of England, 



64 ENGLAND 

and no monarch since Queen Anne has exercised the 
veto power. This important change came about al- 
most imperceptibly and as the result of custom rather 
than of statute. 

" A study of the fundamental principles of the 
government of England, with some reference to their 
origin and development, and with a careful distinc- 
tion between the theory and practice, can not fail to 
be of value to an American citizen. American gov- 
ernmental institutions are of English origin, and a 
consideration of the English government constitutes 
the best possible preparation for a study of American 
government. Indeed, such a preliminary survey 
ought to be considered indispensable to a thorough 
and intelligent understanding of our political insti- 
tutions. In theory the governing power of England 
is vested in the Crown and the three estates of the 
realm, — The Lords, the Clergy, and the Commons. 
As a matter of fact, however, the Lords and the 
Clergy have been merged for centuries, so that there 
are now only two estates instead of three. 

" It will be necessary, then, in a consideration of 
the English government, to study the powers and 
prerogatives of the Crown', the functions of the two 
Houses of Parliament, and the practical working of 
the Cabinet." 

The English nationality as known to-day is made 
up of Celts, Danes, Normans, Germans and others, 
with the Germanic element predominating, and the 
origin of the national assembly can be traced to the 



ENGLAND 65 

forests of Germany, when Caesar and Tacitus were 
the pioneer historians and the king and Popular 
Assembly were to the people what the king and Par- 
liament are to-day. 

During the Anglo-Saxon period and up to the 
time of the Norman conquest in 1066, the elective 
power of the Witan, the predecessor of Parliament, 
was in the ascendency. Those were troublous times, 
when the young nation was reaching out for posses- 
sions and the chief duty of the king was to lead his 
armies in battle. Custom demanded that the Witan 
choose the successor to the throne from the royal 
family, usually the eldest son of the deceased king or 
a son born after the father's succession to the throne. 
If the claimant were a weakling or in any way phy- 
sically defective he was passed over and another 
chosen, perhaps not of the royal family. This was 
the case when Earl Harold, the greatest warrior and 
wisest statesman of the realm, was chosen to suc- 
ceed Edward the Confessor. After the Norman Con- 
quest the succession by right of descent increased in 
importance, until in 1307 Edward II was proclaimed 
king immediately on the death of his predecessor, 
without mention being made of an election. 'Tis 
true that Parliament was obliged to assert its su- 
premacy and depose him in 1327. Richard II was 
also deposed hy the same Parliament in 1839 and 
King Henry IV elected to succeed him. After the 
revolution in 1688, when James II fled the kingdom. 
Parliament by the Bill of Rights gave the throne to 

5 



(£ ENGLAND 

William and Mary. The last time Parliament exer- 
cised its right was in 1700-1701, when it passed the 
Act of Settlement under which the House of Han- 
over reigns to-day. Should occasion demand, Par- 
liament would undoubtedly again assert its elective 
right, and Professor Moran suggests that, should it 
be called upon to do so, it might pass an act more in 
harmony with the advanced religious views of the 
present age. The Act of Settlement provides that 
no Roman Catholic shall be allowed to ascend the 
throne, and should a claimant to the throne marry a 
papist the nation would be absolved from allegiance 
to that claimant and the Crown would pass to the 
next Protestant in order of succession. The act stip- 
ulates that the person inheriting the Crown must, 
on coming into his heritage, ** joyn in communion with 
the Church of England," and at the coronation or on 
the first day of the session of the first Parliament 
thereafter must declare against the doctrine of trans- 
substantiation. 

The ceremony of coronation takes place soon after 
the accession to the throne. It is conducted in West- 
minster Abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
and so impressive is the' spectacle and so seldom 
witnessed that the English people count it a most 
memorable event in their lives to get just a glimpse 
of the splendid pageantry. To show the interest of 
the people in a coronation, Moran extracts the fol- 
lowing, concerning the coronation of Charles H, 
from the famous " Diary " of Pepys : " About four 



ENGLAND 67 

I rose and got to the Abbey, and with much ado did 
get up into a scaffold across the north end. A great 
pleasure it was to see the Abbey raised in the middle, 
all covered with red, and a throne — that is, a chair 
and footstool — on the top of it, and the officers of 
all kinds, so much as the very fiddlers, in red vests." 
That the enthusiasm has in no way decreased was 
evidenced at the recent crowning of King Edward 
VII. 

The ceremony begins with the presentation of the 
new sovereign by the Archbishop, who turns in suc- 
cession to each of the four points of the compass. 
He then says : " Sirs, I here present unto you King 

, the undoubted king of this realm: Wherefore 

all you who have come this day to do your homage, 
are you willing to do the same ? " The people ex- 
press their willingness by crying in unison : " God 
save King ." 

The oath of office is then taken, the king swear- 
ing to govern the United Kingdom according to the 
statutes of Parliament. He promises to maintain 
" the Protestant reformed religion established by 
law ; " and " to preserve unto the Bishops and 
Clergy — and to the churches committed to their 
charge — all such rights and privileges, as by law 
do, or shall appertain to them." 

The coronation chair has been used since the 
time of Edward I (1272-1307), and around it is 
woven an interesting story. The seat of the chair is 
a slab of stone twenty-six inches long, sixteen inches 



68 ENGLAND 

wide, and eleven inches thick. It is the " stone of 
destiny," or " stone of fate," upon which all the 
Scottish kings were crowned. Tradition has it that 
it is the stone upon which Jacob rested his head at 
Bethel ; that his sons took it with them to Egypt ; that 
the son of Cecrops, the founder of Athens, took it 
from Egypt to Spain; that in the year 700 B. C. it 
was taken by an invading army to Ireland, placed 
upon the sacred hill of Tara and called the ** stone of 
fate," because when the rightful heir to the throne 
was being crowned it sent* forth loud groans, but 
when a pretender was about to be crowned it main- 
tained an ominous silence. In 330 B., C. it was 
taken to Scotland by King Kenneth and placed in 
the Abbey of Scone, from which place it was cap- 
tured by King Edward I 'and taken to England, 
where it has since remained in Westminster Abbey. 
There is the usual spoiler of legends, however, for the 
practical geologist tells us that it is nothing but a 
slab of Scotch sand-stone and never journeyed under 
the skies of the Orient. 

The power of the Crown is even more of an 
anomaly than the elective power of Parliament, and 
the royal prerogative is hardly as great as the defini- 
tion of the word by Professor Dicey, viz., *' the dis- 
cretionary authority of the executive." The revolu- 
tion of 1688, when the Bill of Rights settled the suc- 
cession on William and Mary, closed a struggle for 
supremacy between the Crown and the House of 
Commons that had lasted more than four centuries. 



ENGLAND 69 

Professor Moran quotes John R. Green, who says: 
" In outer seeming the revolution of 1688 had only 
transferred the sovereignty over England from James 
to William and Mary. In actual fact, it was trans- 
ferring the sovereignty from the king to the House 
of Commons." The written constitution affirms, ac- 
cording to Alpheus Todd, that " he is, moreover, the 
head of the legislature, of which he forms an essen- 
tial constituent part; first in command of the naval 
and military forces of the state ; the fountain of honor 
and of justice, and the dispenser of mercy, having 
the right to pardon all convicted criminals ; the su- 
preme governor on earth of the national church; and 
the representative of the majesty of the realm 
abroad, with power to declare war, to make peace, 
and to enter into treaty engagements with foreign 
countries." All of these powers exist in theory, but 
none of them are exercised except through responsible 
ministers, and the advice of the minister " amounts to 
a practical dictation." 

In theory the Crown may sanction or veto a meas- 
ure; in practice the king's signature is merely a 
matter of form. The veto power has not been exer- 
cised by the Crown since Queen Anne rejected the 
Scotch Militia Bill in 1707, and the royal signature is 
now affixed as a matter of course. " Should the king 
refuse," says Moran, " to append his signature to a 
bill passed by the two Houses of Parliament, the 
latter would insist and would carry their point." And 
Bagehot says, referring to Queen Victoria : " But the 



70 ENGLAND 

queen has no such veto. She must sign her own 
death warrant if the two Houses unanimously send it 
to her. It is a fiction of the past to ascribe to her 
legislative power. She has long ceased to have any." 

Not even the presence of the king is tolerated in 
Parliament, except at the opening or prorogation, or 
to sign bills during the session. And Queen Victoria 
adopted the custom of being represented by a com- 
mission on these occasions. The precedent of the 
king absenting himself from Parliament was estab- 
lished by George I and George II, who were Germans 
and knew but little of the English language or Eng- 
lish government. 

In the relations of England with foreign powers, 
the king has no voice. All treaties are made by the 
Foreign Secretary, who also receives and answers all 
communications. Although the king is the " foun- 
tain of Justice," he can not decide a case, the courts 
making all decisions. 

The moral influence of the king is of great impor- 
tance, and Alfred Todd says : " Though divested, by 
the growth and development of our political institu- 
tions, of direct political power, the Crown still retains 
an immense personal and social influence for good or 
evil." He still has " the right to be consulted, the 
right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king 
of great sagacity and sense would want no others." 

To understand the English government correctly 
it is necessary to have a knowledge of the workings 
of the Cabinet, which, though not mentioned in the 



ENGLAND 71 

written law of England, is " the guiding and deter- 
mining force of the government. It is composed of 
the leading members of the party dominant in the 
House of Commons; but the names of the noblemen 
and gentlemen composing it are never officially an- 
nounced and no record is kept of its meetings and 
resolutions. 

" Macauley," says Moran, " with his customary 
clearness comments upon the origin of the cabinet as 
follows : * Few things in our history are more curious 
than the origin and growth of the power now pos- 
sessed by the Cabinet. From an early period the 
kings of England had been assisted by a Privy Coun- 
cil, to which the law assigned many important func- 
tions and duties. During several centuries this body 
deliberated on the gravest and most delicate affairs. 
But by degrees its character changed. It became too 
large for despatch and secrecy. The rank of privy 
councillor was often bestowed as an honorary dis- 
tinction on persons to whom nothing was confided, and 
whose opinion was never asked. The sovereign, on 
most occasions, resorted for advice to a small knot of 
leading ministers.' " 

The British ministry and the Cabinet are often 
used synonomously, but there is this difference be- 
tween them, that there are members of the former that 
are not members of the Cabinet, though all members 
of the Cabinet are attached to the ministry. The 
Prime Minister is chosen by the Crown and in turn 
selects the other members of the Cabinet. He may not 



72 ENGLAND 

follow his own inclinations in this selection, but must 
appoint men who can command the support of the ma- 
jority of the House of Commons. The duties of the 
Prime Minister are many. He must supervise the 
work of all the other ministers, and that he may do 
so must familiarize himself with everything of impor- 
tance in the various departments. " He is the official 
link between the Crown and the Cabinet." 

Parliament consists of the House of Lords and 
the House of Commons. The Upper Chamber is 
composed of six hundred members, who inherit the 
honorary title of Lord, or have it bestowed upon them 
for some act of loyalty. The sessions of the body are 
attended by scarcely a dozen of the members, and 
three constitute a quorum. Not one measure passed 
by the House of Commons has been defeated in the 
House of Lords since 1832, for they know the bills 
will be sent to them time after time until they are 
ratified and the Lower House wins its point. There 
has been much talk about reforming the House of 
Lords, or abolishing it altogether, and Lord Rosebery 
told an amusing story, while speaking in favor of re- 
forming the Lords in 1884. It was about a noble earl 
who spoke in the House four long hours with no other 
audience than the presiding officer and another peer. 
" On another occasion," says Moran, " Lord Lynd- 
hurst, the presiding officer, after being bored by a long 
and tiresome speech and having given numerous in- 
dications of his body and mind, arose and expressed 
his determination to ' count out ' the speaker." 



ENGLAND 73 

Concerning the origin of the House of Commons, 
Moran says that it " may be traced to a very definite 
date. It was founded by Simon de Montfort in 1265. 
The event is one of the most important in all Eng- 
lish history. Henry HI was the king of England at the 
time, and his despotic character was the immediate 
cause of the establishment of the popular branch of 
the legislature. He had repeatedly and solemnly con- 
firmed the provisions of Magna Charta only to disre- 
gard them persistently. He harbored many unworthy 
foreign favorites at his court, and was prodigal in the 
expenditure of money. To supply the necessary rev- 
enue he extorted money from the people by various 
illegal methods." At last the barons, goaded to des- 
peration, " took up the cause of the people, prevailed 
against Henry as they had previously done against 
John, and succeeded in getting his unwilling consent 
to a set of articles known as the Provisions of Ox- 
ford, by which his power was very greatly curtailed. 
Three years later, in 1261, the king boldly refused to 
be bound by the provisions, and civil war ensued. 
King Henry was utterly defeated, and the government 
fell, as a result, into the hands of the barons, of whom 
Simon de Montfort was the leader. This patriotic 
man made good use of the vast power of which he 
found himself possessed. The government author- 
ity up to this time had been lodged in the king and the 
two Estates of the realm, — the Lords and the Clergy. 
The common people had been excluded. Simon de 
Montfort now issued writs for a Parliament to which 



74 ENGLAND 

representatives of the common people or the Third 
Estate were to be admitted. .The sheriffs were di- 
rected to return two knights from each shire, two cit- 
izens from each city, and two burgesses from each 
borough to meet in London on the 20th of January, 
1265. This assembly, known as the Parliament of 
Simon de Montfort, met according to call in 1265, 
and this date marks the birth of the House of Com- 
mons. The beginning of the popular chamber was a 
humble one, and thirty years were destined to elapse 
before there was a perfect representation in Parliament 
of the three Estates of the Realm. Even then all of 
the members of Parliament sat together, constituting 
one House, and continued to do so until about the 
middle of the fourteenth century." 

The founder of the House of Commons is worthy 
of a word of mention. He was a member of an il- 
lustrious French family and was born in France in 
1208. In 1230 he came to England, and nine years 
later was made Earl of Leicester. He was a man of 
chivalrous spirit, was a natural leader, and just the 
one for the crisis of that time. He was killed in the 
battle of Evesham, and enthusiasm for his name ex- 
pressed itself in the song, " The Strong Citadel." 
Moran characterizes him as the " Moses who led the 
English people out of the wilderness of oppression to 
the promised land of liberty; and though great in 
peace and war, his greatest claim to the undying grat- 
itud,e of posterity lies in the fact that it was he who 
first admitted the people to their inheritance, and thus 



ENGLAND 75 

' first struck the keynote of constitutional govern- 
ment.' " 

The EngHsh statute requires ParHament to meet 
once in three years, but as a matter of fact, it is 
obliged to meet annually. The session begins in mid- 
winter and continues until the middle of August. Free- 
dom of speech is one of the great privileges enjoyed by 
the English Parliament as well as by the American 
Congress. " Under this privilege members of Par- 
liament have the right to express their opinions in 
either House without reservation and without being 
questioned therefor in any other place. Either House, 
however, may call its members to order for unparlia- 
mentary language. In a large number of cases mem- 
bers have been censured, imprisoned, or even ex- 
pelled for offensive utterances. In most cases the 
member using unparliamentary language is called to 
order, and satisfies the House by an apology or an 
explanation. In other cases a more severe punishment 
follows." 

Representation in the House of Commons is 
based on population, and the members are divided into 
three classes, representing counties, the boroughs, or 
towns, and the universities. The speaker is the 
official spokesman of the House, and also its presid- 
ing officer. He leaves partisanship behind him when 
he assumes the chair and must be impartial in public 
and private intercourse with members. In rank the 
Speaker precedes all other commoners. On vacating 
the office he is made a peer, and granted a pension 



76 ENGLAND 

The two important political parties in England 
are the Liberals and Conservatives, and the all-im- 
portant political issue is Home Rule. After Mr. 
Gladstone's strenuous championship of Home Rule 
for Ireland split the Liberal party, the opposing ele- 
ment took the name of Liberal Unionists and joined 
their strength with that of the Conservatives, keeping 
the latter in power up to the recent elections (1906). 
As a result of the last general election the Liberals 
find themselves in power with a greater majority than 
they have had since 1832, the year of the Reform Bill. 
Several elements entered into the defeat of the Con- 
servatives. " * Thou shalt not introduce protection,' 
is the first commandment given by the people," some- 
one has said; so most of all it was the Conservatives 
themselves who wrought the avalanche — the inde- 
pendent citizens who neglect to vote unless their 
pocketbook is threatened. These in the recent elec- 
tion arose in their might and asked for free trade. 
Then there was the introduction of Chinese labor 
into the Transvaal ; and the Licensing Act that offended 
the friends of temperance. 

The Prime Minister of the new ministry is Sir 
Henry Campbell-Bannerman. With what success he 
and his colleagues will meet the great financial and 
political difficulties with which the Conservatives have 
endowed them remains to be seen. Students of social 
progress see a new element in British politics — it is 
labor. With Sir John Burns, the English labor 
leader, in the cabinet, and with Sir John Redmond to 



ENGLAND 77 

champion the cause of Home Rule, something impor- 
tant is looked for from the new ministry. 

Under the new government things are looking up 
for Ireland. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman has long 
been regarded as a Home Ruler, and his appointment 
of the Earl of Aberdeen as Lord Lieutenant of Ire- 
land, with Right Honorable James Bryce Chief Sec- 
retary for Ireland, it would seem that there is cause 
to hope that the Irish people may at last realize what 
they have so long contended for. The Earl of Aber- 
deen was Viceroy of Ireland under Gladstone and is 
greatly beloved by the Irish people. 

England may be considered slow, and many of the 
features of her government are ridiculed on account 
of their absurdity; but if not logical to exactness, 
England's institutions have worked well, and the 
history of the country proves that " the race is not al- 
ways to the swift."^ 



CHAPTER VI 

THE ENGLISH HOUSE OF COMMONS 

THAT is an era in a man's life, especially if he be 
an American, the day on which he sees for the 
first time this imperial assemblage, the oldest, wealth- 
iest, most cultivated, most powerful legislative body 
in the world. And yet in its ordinary modes the 
House of Commons is not an inspiring spectacle. 
There are some men in it whom it is a delight to look 
upon and listen to. There is an abundance of cul- 
ture in it, and high birth and good breeding. Indeed 
there are in it great scholars, great authors, great 
jurists, great wits, and some of the most perfect gen- 
tlemen in the world. But as a whole the name is de- 
ceitful. 

The House of Commons is not a House of the 
common people. It is a House of territorial, profes- 
sional and commercial magnates, with a few phi- 
lanthropists, many scholars, and more snobs. It is 
the stronghold, not of the English people, but of 
those great landed and moneyed classes that are still 
able to control the English people. It is the nature 
of aristocracies to be absorbingly selfish; the aris- 
tocracy of England has by hereditary privilege the un- 
disputed possession of one entire branch of the legis- 
lature, the House of Lords, yet it also seeks to clutch 
as large a portion of the other branch as by its enor- 

78 



ENGLAND 79 

mous wealth, its social prestige, and its ancient con- 
nections it is able to obtain. The Lower House, or 
House of Commons, is nominally a representation of 
the common people ; but it is only since the great re- 
form of 1832 that the middle, or trading classes, have 
had any appreciable voice in the selection of those 
who sit in this branch of Parliament. Until a re- 
cent date a considerable property qualification was 
necessary to render a citizen eligible for membership 
in this body; and it is still practically the rule that 
only men of fortune can aspire to the honor of writ- 
ing M. P. after their names. Parliamentary service 
brings no salary, but instead of that the privilege of a 
more conspicuous social position and of heavier bills 
for current expenses; while the mere cost of get- 
ting elected to this luxury averages the pleasant little 
sum of $15,000 for each member. 

By a study of the personal composition of the 
House of Commons we are enabled to estimate not 
only the spirit of its legislation, but that strange 
code of courtesy which prevails within its walls. 
Parliamentary politeness is a very unique affair; 
and few natives or foreigners have reflected upon 
the subject deeply enough to account for its eccentric- 
ities and its contradictions. The visitor is ushered 
into the gallery of the legislative chamber, where he 
has always understood are assembled the most schol- 
arly and polished gentlemen of a highly civilized na- 
tion ; and you see down the somber hall, crowding the 
long files of benches, an array of black-coated states- 



80 ENGLAND 

men, all sitting with their hats on. Not all, for here 
and there is an exception. Mr. Mill, with his sharp 
face and bald head, always proved a shining exception ; 
Disraeli ever abhorred the vacuum of a beaver, and 
Mr. Gladstone invariably sat throughout the sessions 
bareheaded. 

The first impression is invariably unpleasant. 
American chivalry starts at the incivility of forget- 
ting that there are ladies in the room, even though he 
knows that they are ladies caged. He wonders if 
" meeting has begun," and finding that such is the 
case, and insefisibly grouping Quaker habits with 
Parliamentary ones, is obliged to rectify his standard 
of indoor courtesy, and to accept a new plank in his 
platform of gentlemanlike behavior. 

Presently another observation steals over the 
senses of the onlooker and fills him with surprise. 
He has often been assailed with the taunt that Amer- 
icans are so boorish as to sit with their feet in such a 
position as to allow their brains the benefit of grav- 
itation in seeking the head; but he certainly ex- 
pected to find in this assembly of superlative English 
gentlemen naught but dignity and grace of posture. 
But as the debate goes on he finds himself greatly mis- 
taken, and in addition to all varieties of grotesque and 
ungainly looking postures, one honorable member sits 
with his feet raised and resting on an opposite bench, in 
dangerous proximity to some famous man's nose, and 
on enquiry we learn with amazement that the pos- 
sessor of said irreverent feet is a good old Tory bar- 



ENGLAND 81 

onet. When, therefore, he sees that even respected 
and honored old baronets can sit with their feet up, 
he is less astonished as he glances around the oppo- 
site side of the room to find gentlemen of the old 
school on the Whig side doing the same thing; and he 
is glad to escape into a consoling reflection by re- 
calling to mind Fenimore Cooper's dictum, that 
" there is a tendency in the Anglo-Saxon race to put 
the heels higher than the head." 

But something to the credit of the House of Com- 
mons manners must be emphasized. In this great as- 
semblage of English gentlemen there is one article of 
furniture that you will not find anywhere, — a cus- 
pidor. What is more to the point, there is no need 
for one. Sooner or later it will be well for American 
citizenship to make a determined effort to adjust it- 
self to Sydney Smith's stern and irrevocable verdict: 
" All claims to civilization are suspended till this 
secretion is disposed of. No English gentleman has 
spit upon the floor since the Heptarchy." 

It may be well, before looking further into the 
behavior of the members of the House of Commons, 
to consider what is the real significance of these per- 
sonages. The king has almost no direct political 
power in England ; he is only one of her constitutional 
fictions, very costly and very ornamental. The House 
of Lords is rapidly becoming another constitutional 
fiction, its legislative power being reduced to that of 
criticism, consultation, and passive resistance. In real- 
ity, the House of Commons is supreme within the 



82 ENGLAND 

British Empire for all purposes whatsoever. It is 
king, lords, and commons in one. Thus the onlooker 
is about to approach a committee of six hundred and 
fifty-eight private English gentlemen, who, through a 
certain bungling and corrupt hocus-pocus called an 
election, are, for the time being, the supreme rulers of 
one-fifth of the human family and one-twelfth of the 
habitable globe. 

The House of Commons is not an assemblage for 
oratory or for philosophical discussion or for dress or 
for show of any kind, it is simply a big business com- 
mittee. And there is something truly admirable in 
the business-like plainness, in the commercial simplic- 
ity and directness of their ways. It signifies work, 
not fuss or palaver. They keep their hats on, they 
put their feet up, they loll about and stretch them- 
selves at full length on their benches in order to keep 
alive, and emphasize the idea that the place is not an 
exhibition room at all; not a theatric French legisla- 
tive chamber, with its rostrum for preconcerted de- 
clamatory explosions ; nor an American Congress with 
desks for members to do their correspondence at, 
instead of attending to business, and with its animated 
windmill going by water and whiskey, grinding out 
realms of eloquence printed beforehand. It is but a 
homely workroom, in which the business of the Brit- 
ish Empire is industriously transacted. 

Nothing could be finer than the fine tone of quiet 
and assured strength which on ordinary occasions 
marks their proceedings; nothing more worthy of 



ENGLAND 83 

imitation than the purpose they manifest of doing the 
greatest amount of work with the least possible 
bluster. Hence it is that they are very impatient of 
eloquence that seems to be going off for its own grat- 
ification, and with any orator who is so unfortunate as 
to betray the fact that he is attacking them with malice 
prepense and verbose. The sort of a man most re- 
spected in the House of Commons is he who knows at 
least one thing, even if he can not tell about it; who 
works much and says but little about it ; while the sort 
of man least respected is the professional speech- 
maker, the senatorial elocutionist, the spouting polit- 
ical geyser. 

In one aspect this House is the most courteous, in 
another the most discourteous of all assemblies in the 
civilized world. It unites in itself the attributes of 
perfect decorum and almost brutal discourteousness. 
The practice of individual politeness is exquisite. The 
moment a member rises to address the House, and thus 
stands forth in his individual character role, he seems 
possessed by the most refined and courteous considera- 
tion for others. In his allusion to antagonists he 
carefully guards against the. slightest imputation of 
dishonorable motive ; or if a word of oblique signifi- 
cance should slip from his tongue he hastens to with- 
draw it and to express his regret; nay, even in his 
sarcasm and home thrusts he is careful to mention 
something to the very credit of the very foeman he 
is about to scathe. Such a thing as casting vituper- 
ative epithets, as giving the lie, as threatening personal 



84 ENGLAND 

violence, would not be tolerated in the House of Com- 
mons for the fraction of a second, except indeed under 
dire compulsion in the course of an Irish debate. In 
this respect it must be pronounced the finest legislative 
body known to history. It has brought to the high- 
est perfection the fine art of transfusing exciting de- 
bate with those graceful amenities which are twice 
honorable and also twice blessed, and which lift its 
discussions leagi-ies above the hot and scurrilous word- 
brawls into which most men fly when they attempt 
to argue. Wholesome vigor in expression is not neces- 
sarily enfeebled by total abstinence from polemical 
mud-throwing. Real intellectual blows, logical hard 
hitting, the sturdy cut and thrust of mind with mind 
— these are beneficial, the more the better; but they 
are not rendered more beneficial by being expressed 
with vulgarity and discourtesy. The immense pres- 
tige of Lord Palmerston enabled him to indulge in 
many personal liberties in debate, but it never enabled 
him to indulge in the liberty of being uncivil to the 
most insignificant or the most unpopular member of 
the House. When on one occasion he said impatiently 
of Joseph Hume, " If the honorable gentleman's under- 
standing is obtuse it is not my fault," he was instantly 
brought to his senses by the reproachful murmur as it 
rose from all sides of the House, and he was reminded 
that even Lord Palmerston could not be allowed to 
forget the fine code of legislative chivalry established 
there. 



ENGLAND 85 

But the strange thing about the House of Com- 
mons civility is that when a member ceases to speak 
and subsides from his individual responsibility into the 
general mass, then instead of being any longer the in- 
carnation of courtesy, he may without violating any 
law or habit of the House, become instantly the in- 
carnation of discourtesy. Standing, he must observe 
the gracious amenities of debate; sitting, he may do 
as he likes. Standing, he must not breathe the slight- 
est suspicion against his antagonist; sitting, he may 
bellow at his opponent, bray at him, bark at him, mew 
at him, squeal at him, crow at him, whistle at him, 
laugh aloud at him. Standing, he must illustrate the 
manners of an English gentleman ; sitting, he is at per- 
fect liberty to illustrate the manners of a ruffian, a 
cow, a cat, a dog, an ass, a South Sea Islander or a 
baboon. This is not hyperbole ; it has occurred over 
and over again in recent reform debates. It is the 
mode in which high-born, high-bred, and high-titled 
Tory gentlemen received the speeches of Gladstone 
and John Bright. 

England is the far-renowned land of anomalies, 
and in no place is this more thoroughly demonstrated 
than in this legislature of opposite qualities, — the 
House of Commons. 

So, as we look at West London, that city of pleas- 
ure and privilege, we realize that its very existence de- 
pends on a better understanding that all which is really 
great in the social life of any people must be founded 



86 ENGLAND 

upon that which is pure, lovely, and of good report; 
upon the abatement of human misery, and the up- 
holding of righteousness ; for that alone which exalts 
a nation exalts any section of society./ 



CHAPTER VII 

THREE LEADERS OF THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT 



D 



URING the last English election, when it seemed 
certain that the reins of government management 
would be handed over to the Liberals, it was often 
asked, " Who will be the next Premier? " There were 
three men, pre-eminent in ability and service, who were 
often named: Earl Spencer, Sir Henry Campbell- 
Bannerman, and Mr. Winston Churchill. And now 
that the choice has fallen upon Sir Henry to form the 
new Cabinet, some account of these three eminent 
Parliamentary and public leaders will be of interest. 

Earl Spencer is a typical English gentleman, by 
heredity, by training, and by achievement marked out 
for a high position. J. Poyntz Spencer, Fifth Earl, 
Knight of the Garter, Privy Councilor, D. C. L., LL. 
D., Baron Spencer, Viscount Althrop, Lord Lieu- 
tenant of Northamptonshire since 1872, and Keeper of 
the Privy Seal of the Duke of Cornwall since 1901, is 
an English grandee of the first rank. He owns about 
twenty-seven thousand acres of land, part in London 
and part in Northamptonshire. In his seventieth year, 
he is the leader of the handful of Liberal peers who 
still survive in the House of Lords. 

Earl Spencer is no orator. It is said that his 
speeches are dull and dreary. But his political gifts 
and capacity for work are unlimited. He entered the 



88 ENGLAND 

administration in 1868, under Mr. Gladstone. In 
that year, when only thirty-three, he was appointed 
lord-lieutenant of Ireland, holding the post till 1874, 
when the Gladstone ministry fell. In the second Glad- 
stone cabinet. Earl Spencer was minister of agricul- 
ture and lord president of the council. It was in this 
ministry that his qualities of grit, courage, and ad- 
ministration were proved. The entire government of 
Ireland was thrown into his hands on the retirement 
of Mr. Forster and the assassination of Lord Fred- 
erick Cavendish and Mr. Burke. It was a terrible 
time, — the land was demoralized and in mutiny. But 
(in the words of Mr. Morley's " Gladstone " ) " the 
new viceroy attacked the formidable task before him 
with resolution, minute assiduity, and an inexhaust- 
ible store of that steady-eyed patience which is still 
the sovereign requisite of any man, who, whether with 
coercion or without, takes in hand the government of 
Ireland." Earl Spencer was threatened with assassi- 
nation and subjected to endless insult, but for three 
terrible years he stood his ground and never lost his 
temper or nerve. In 1892 Mr. Gladstone sent Earl 
Spencer to the admiralty. This, although a good 
appointment, led indirectly to Mr. Gladstone's retire- 
ment, when Earl Spencer insisted on strengthening 
the navy, and, although his naval program was 
approved by a majority of the Cabinet, nothing could 
reconcile Mr. Gladstone to what appeared to him a 
monstrous and unnecessary expenditure of public 
money in provocative armaments. Mr. Gladstone's 



ENGLAND 89 

large-mindedness, however, was illuslrated by the fact, 
that notwithstanding his disapproval and the success 
of the program, upon his retirement he submitted Earl 
Spencer's name to the queen as his successor in the 
premiership. When Lord Rosebery became premier, 
Earl Spencer cheerfully continued to serve on the ad- 
miralty, and at the Liberal debacle the " Red Earl " 
never swerved. He remained at his post, and Eng- 
land, which expects every man to do his duty, has 
never been disappointed in Earl Spencer. 

Even if Earl Spencer should become premier, Sir 
Henry Campbell-Bannerman will be one of the most 
important members of the new Cabinet. " C-B " is a 
year younger than Earl Spencer. He was originally 
plain Henry Campbell, but when his maternal uncle, 
Henry Bannerman, died, he assumed the second 
name, and, quite late in his career,— in 1895, and 
twenty-seven years after he first entered the House of 
Commons,— the baronetcy came. 

" C-B " has led the House of Commons since 
February, 1899. He stepped into the breach when 
other men deserted it, and has done his duty manfully 
and well, under circumstances of great difficulty. He 
is a very cautious man, — a canny Scot. He refrained 
all through the war from praising the Boers, fearing 
lest one word of eulogy might lead them to prolong 
the war. He also took every opportunity to assert 
himself with Mr. Morley in repudiating any intention 
of restoring the independence of the South African 
Republics. " I have publicly stated that the annexa- 



90 ENGLAND 

tion must, in my opinion, be upheld." But this was to 
be only on condition that the new subjects were to be 
admitted to all the rights and privileges of British 
self-governing colonists. *' C-B " is a shrewd man, 
full of bonhomie, and possessing no small fund of 
natural eloquence. 

He does not write articles or books. He makes 
speeches, and uncommonly good speeches they are. 
Good-tempered, genial, humorous, and incisive, he has 
never had justice done him. In mere forensic tour- 
ney Mr. Asquith may be his superior. But there is 
no blood, or heart, or soul, in Mr. Asquith's speeches. 
Cold himself, he never excites a generous warmth of 
passion or enthusiasm among his hearers. Sir Henry 
is much more human. If it can not be said of him that 
he can " wield at will the fierce democracy," he has 
undoubtedly a great faculty of effective public speech, 
effective alike in Parliament and on the platform. 

That both these leaders are, heart and soul, in 
favor of the Anglo-American entente -c or diale goes 
without saying. They do not favor the policy so dear 
to the British Jingo mind of converting the Dominion 
of Canada into an ironclad fighting unit in the armed 
forces of the empire. All the schemes for fostering 
the growth of militarism in Canada are by them de- 
tested and abhorred. Moreover, whether Lord Spen- 
cer be premier or Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, 
Mr. Bryce will be a prominent member of the cabinet, 
and Mr. Bryce is as sympathetic an American as if 
he had been born in New England. 



ENGLAND 91 

After the premier, Mr. Winston ChurcliiU, now 
under-secretary to the colonies, will, it is prophes.ed, 
become the leader in the Commons. While .he ma - 
rimonial alliances between American women and Brit- 
ish politicians have not often resulted m large or 
brilliant families, there- is one brilliant exception^ 
Miss Jerome, who married Randolph Churchill, has not 
a large family, but her son, Winston, has done much 
to gratify British American intermarriages, tor 
Winston Churchill, who is an American on his moth- 
er's side is the most conspicuous and the most prom- 
ising of the younger politicians in Great Britain. 
Whether he will ever lead the House of Commons is 
an open question. But if he does, he will owe it quite 
as much to his American mother as to his aristocratic 

*^ Miss Jennie Jerome, who became Lady Randolph 
Churchill, and who is now Mrs. Cornwallis-West, is 
. by universal admission one of the cleverest and most 
influential women in Britain. She is credited with 
having suggested to her husband the formation of the 
PHmrose League, the most successful of all modern 
political organizations in England. She is only one 
of its vice-presidents, but she was its inspirmg voice. 
Many of its most successful features were Yankee 
dodges which proved mightily successful when trans- 
planted to British soil. She was a power « English 
society during her husband's lifetime, and has been 
still more conspicuous and influential since his death. 
She can organize, intrigue, edit, and tram. She no 



92 ENGLAND 

longer edits the sumptuous Anglo-Saxon Reviezv, but 
she contributes to periodical literature and devotes 
herself to the task of promoting the fortunes of her 
son. " Winston," an irate Tory recently remarked, 
— " there's nothing in Winston. But he's got some of 
the cleverest women of England at his back. That's 
the real secret of his success." That is not the whole 
truth, for " Winston " has proved his capacity in re- 
gions where his mother's care could not stand him in 
any stead. But he undoubtedly owes much to the 
American strain which comes from her. He has in- 
herited a full measure of American snap, and is a 
hustler of the first class. He is as pushing as a New 
England canvasser, and his " American ways " are 
often referred to with intense disgust by the rivals 
whom he has passed in the race. " I never see him," 
said a conservative M. P. the other day, '' but I 
think of a Chicago newsboy. He certainly means 
to make things hum. He is constantly on the alert. 
In the House, and in the country, he is never silent." 
To-day, Winston Churchill is the center of the 
British political arena. He is the most conspicuous 
and in many respects the ablest of the British rising 
statesmen. He has gone from the Unionists to the 
Liberal benches in the House of Commons, and it is 
safe to predict that in the near future he will be Lib- 
eral leader in the House. Speaking of his career, 
and particularly of his military adventures. Lord 
Dufferin once remarked, " On every occasion he has 
shown that chivalrous courage which becomes a high- 



ENGLAND 93 

minded gentleman, and, what is equally important, 
that capacity, that skill, and that resource that bear 
testimony to his intellectual ability." 

Mr. Winston Churchill is audacity incarnate. He 
will dare and never cease to dare. In this he is the 
true son of his father. Both the Churchills entered 
Parliament at the same age. To be an M. P. at 
twenty-five and a prospective party leader at thirty is 
a lot which has fallen to them, and to them only, in 
our generation. 

Winston Churchill's grandfather was the seventh 
Duke of Marlborough, at one time Lord Lieutenant of 
Ireland in a Tory administration. The present Church- 
ill was born in 1874. Educated at Eton and Cam- 
bridge, Winston finished at Sandhurst, with honors, in 
1894. The next year he was appointed lieutenant in 
the Fourth Hussars. Soon, however, he obtained leave 
to visit Cuba, which was then in the throes of her ten 
years' war with Spain. His father had been corres- 
pondent for the Daily Graphic in South Africa; the 
son was special correspondent for the same journal in 
Cuba. He saw service under Martinez Campos, and 
was decorated for his bravery. No sooner had Jie 
reached home than his regiment was ordered to India. 
All through the frontier war at Malakand he fought 
with the Thirty-first Punjab Infantry and wrote for 
the Daily Telegraph- For his valor he was again dec- 
orated. When he returned to London he imme- 
diately joined the force of General Kitchener for the 
reconquest of Khartum, all the time acting as cor- 



94 ENGLAND 

respondent for the Morning Post. His stay with 
Kitchener was full of adventure, and he was in the 
march from Atbara to Khartum, and in the battle of 
Omdurman, which he described as an eye-witness. In 
his book, " The River War," he told the story of the 
conquest of the Sudan, and in his despatches to the 
Morning Post he criticised the work of his commander- 
in-chief so daringly and so truly that his political repu- 
tation was made. He, however, soon concluded that 
he could be more useful out of the service. 

It was not until the Boer War, however, that Wins- 
ton Churchill rose to the first rank of war correspon- 
dents. He was the luckiest and the smartest, and cer- 
tainly the most picturesque personality of all the 
newspaper writers during that conflict. He was taken 
prisoner in the early part of the war, escaped, and 
told all about it in his letters home. His correspond- 
ence marked him as a man of distinction, — a man 
who was not merely a keen observer and a brilliant 
writer, but who had the political instinct in his blood. 
At first he was certain that the Boers, considering their 
courage and the strength of their religious conviction, 
would surely win, and it was some time, he says, be- 
fore he could believe in a British triumph. In March, 
1900, he published in the Morning Post, his famous 
appeal for dealing with the Boers in a reasonable 
spirit of conciliation. 

Mr. Churchill entered Parliament as a Tory Dem- 
ocrat, and a Tory Democrat he remains to this day, 
although he sits on the Liberal benches. Toryism, 



ENGLAND 95 

however, as interpreted by the Churchills, is often al- 
most indistinguishable from Radicalism as inter- 
preted by men like John Burns, who have the histor- 
ical insight and a keen sympathy with the traditional 
glories of their country. He gave Parliament a taste 
of his 'quality in his scathing analysis of Mr. Broder- 
ick's new army scheme, in May, 1901, and was the only 
Unionist who voted against it. Of his speech on that 
occasion, Mr. Massingham, whose " Pictures in Par- 
liament " are perhaps the best contemporary chronicle 
of proceedings at Westminster, said: 

" Its threads were not, of course, woven with the 
skill that comes with long practice, and here and there 
were missing stitches. But in its elevation of purpose, 
its broad conception of national policy, and, in the 
direct movement of its closing sentences, I recall 
nothing like it since Mr. Gladstone died. I will make 
two criticisms upon it, — the first is, that it is the 
speech that should long ago have been delivered from 
our own benches ; the second is, that in the years to 
come, its author should be prime minister,— I hope 
Liberal prime minister,— of England." 

Always a Conservative, Mr. Churchill is still a 
free-trader, and in this fact is to be found the cause 
of his desertion of the Unionist ranks. He could not 
remain a Jingo and a militarist, so he became a sup- 
porter of the Liberals. His first serious administra- 
tive speeches were made against financial expenditure 
and the policy of protection. His first field for re- 
trenchment is in the army ; he upholds, but he is un- 



96 ENGLAND 

alterably opposed to, the attempt to convert England to 
a military power. There are two other questions upon 
which he differs from the old Conservative forces, — 
he has Radical ideas on the Irish question and on edu- 
cation; he is against the National Education Act. It 
may be said that he is a born demagogue. Perhaps he 
is ; but this young man, demagogue though he may be, 
has already, before he is thirty, won the ear and 
aroused the enthusiasm of the great majority of his 
countrymen.^ 



CHAPTER VIII 

ENGLISH INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS 

THE growth of industrial life in the United States, 
with its attendant problems, makes a chapter 
on England's industrial history of special instructive 
value to American students. The industrial evolu- 
tion of England is of special interest, too, because of 
British pre-eminence in the industrial world. Its 
industrial history began with Sir Richard Ark- 
wright's invention of his spinning machine, in 
1769. The idea of a machine which would 
spin many threads at the same time was ini- 
tiated by James Hargreaves five years before. Tra- 
dition says that the idea, which was to eventually 
revolutionize English industrial life, came to Har- 
greaves bv an accident. On suddenly returning home 
one day, his surprised wife made a quick movement 
which upset her spinning-wheel. Her husband no- 
ticed that the spindle continued to revolve in the up- 
right position, and the thought came to him, why not 
construct a machine with many spindles, all driven 
by one wheel. He soon had such a machine in opera- 
tion, and in honor of his wife named it the spinning- 
jenny. But it was left to Arkwright to improve and 
perfect this labor-saving machine, and on his success 
and the introduction of steam power, the invention of 
the American cotton gin and the power loom, arose 



98 ENGLAND 

England's mighty industrial supremacy. Until these 
inventions came, there were little more than cottage 
industries, for the primitive methods did not require 
specially constructed factory buildings nor organized 
efforts. But now, highly developed and extensive 
machinery called for specially constructed buildings, 
large capital, and an army of operatives. One can 
hardly at this day understand the mighty industrial 
revolution and evolution which these changes wrought, 
and they all came in the forty years between 1760 
and 1800. Out of this change grew the great indus- 
trial problems which England has been solving ever 
since by governmental regulation. In order to appre- 
ciate what has been accomplished by a century of 
agitation and legislation, it is necessary to look into 
the conditions which have prompted a long series of 
effective regulations. 

Even before the inventions above mentioned, and 
particularly after them, England began to cultivate 
a world-wide market for its manufactured products. 
Society is a delicately adjusted and balanced system of 
labor and modes of life, and the moderate develop- 
ment of any one feature soon throws the entire 
system into disorder. This is- what occurred in Eng- 
land in the seventeenth century. Before the indus- 
trial revolution, the land was a country of small 
shops and individual effort. In every village the hand 
loom was turning out fabrics ; and all sorts of other 
town and rural industries had grown up. Then came 
the period of great factories. To operate them re- 



ENGLAND 99 

quired large bodies of people, and the village shops 
could not meet their competition. Accordingly, all 
over the land village industries fell into decay, and 
the people either lived on, declining from competence 
to want, or drifted to the factory towns to be engulfed 
in the stream of the new industrial life with its 
attendant ills, which will be described farther on. 

At the same time that industrial life was passing 
through a transformation, agricultural life was also 
changing. Improved machinery was coming into use, 
better breeds of stock and more scientific methods ; 
but the prices were low, and the factory towns held 
out such alluring offers of better pay and more attrac- 
tive social conditions that from the country, as well 
as the village, vast numbers were shifting to the 
factory centers. Goldsmith graphically describes in 
" The Deserted Village " the effects of the changes 
going on in the land. 

In the realm of ideas marked changes took place 
in the closing years of the eighteenth and the opening 
of the nineteenth century. Before that period some- 
thing had been undertaken in the way of governmental 
regulation of the conditions that should be imposed on 
industrial life. But during the period named writers 
and statesmen advocated what was afterward termed 
the Iaissc;:;-faire theory, with such convincing force 
that it was an accepted creed for a long while, and 
resulted in the gradual undoing of all labor regula- 
tion by the government. The theory referred to was 
that in industrial life there should be no interference 



100 ENGLAND 

with perfect liberty for every person to labor in his 
own way, in working, employing, buying, or selling. 
In this theory all restricting laws were to be annulled, 
and people were to be left to decide their economic 
measures for themselves. It was a return to the 
natural order that existed before organized industries. 
This theory was carried further by Adam Smith, 
whose work, the " Wealth of Nations," which came 
out in 1776, was destined to exert an enormous in- 
fluence. Its teaching was " that the most effectual 
plan for advancing a people to greatness is to main- 
tain that order of things which nature has pointed 
out, by allowing every man, as long as he observes 
the rules of justice, to pursue his own interests in his 
own way, and to bring both his industry and his 
capital into the freest competition with those of his 
fellow-citizens." According to this theory the ob- 
servance of a natural order of individual decision 
would in the end lead to the same salutary results 
to which all statutes were aimed. The acceptance 
of this theory was so general that for a while all 
government economic and industrial regulations were 
either withdrawn or fell into disuse. For a time, and 
until about 1830, labor, capital, and enterprise in their 
relations were unrestricted, free, and independent, and 
with what results we will now consider. 

There followed the acceptance of the theories of 
Adam Smith and others, a period of individualism. 
Farm and village laborers were free to find employ- 
ment anywhere, and a people that had been fixed in 



ENGLAND 101 

their habits and had cultivated thrift at home began 
to crowd to the factory centers, where they found no 
government protection, and under a free competitive 
system, long hours, and low wages they became slaves 
to rapacious manufacturers. The mill owner was not 
obliged to consider the welfare of the operatives ; 
there was no strong power to interfere in their behalf, 
nor combination of labor to curb the hard conditions 
imposed by capital. On the surface, economic con- 
ditions seemed to be flourishing, and England was 
fast winning the premiership in the empire of trade. 
But below the surface there was a deplorable condi- 
tion. Big factory competition was slowly driving out 
the small farm and village hand industries, which 
still lingered and kept up a contest for their very 
existence, to the verge of pauperism. 

In the bustling trade and factory centers there was 
another picture, even more depressing. England's 
foreign trade was growing at a rapid rate, and to keep 
up with the demand a system of forcing resulted. 
The hours for labor were lengthened to twelve and 
fourteen, and to find more help the custom grew up 
of apprenticing the children of the poorhouses. They 
were, by hundreds, at seven and eight years huddled 
in the factories and put at work on long hours, housed 
and under-fed in barracks, worked in crowded and 
filthy rooms, and driven without sympathy to tasks 
suited only to strong hands. Nor were women ex- 
empt, and in factories and mines they were wearing 
out their lives by hard toil. The day usually began 



102 ENGLAND 

at six in the morning and continued until 7 : 30 and 
8 : 30 in the evening. Some mills began as early as 
five in the morning and did not close until nine in the 
evening. There were few holidays, and generally 
Sunday was the only day of relief from the fearful 
strain. 

Conditions were becoming intolerable, and two 
of the noblest humanitarians of the age, Robert Owen 
and Robert Peel, heard the cries for relief and threw 
their souls into movements and measures to change all 
this. Owen was himself a successful mill owner and 
early moved for labor emancipation. He introduced 
reforms and gathered a vast amount of information 
to show England what was going on, and wrote a 
pamphlet which had an enormous influence. Peel was 
in Parliament and started the movement for govern- 
ment regulation, where everything begins in England, 
by getting a commission to investigate conditions and 
report them to the government. This was in 1815, 
the date when was begun in Parliament a movement 
for industrial supervision and labor emancipation 
which has pressed steadily forward to this year 1906. 
It was during the early years of the agitation that 
Mrs. Browning espoused the children's cause and 
thrilled all England with her " Cry of the Chil- 
dren : " — 

"Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers, 

Ere the sorrow comes with years? 
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers. 

And that can not stop their tears. 
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows ; 



ENGLAND 10^ 

The young birds are chirping in the nest; 
The young fawns are playing with the shadows; 

The young flowers are blowing toward the West; 
But the young, young children, O my brothers 1 

They are weeping bitterly. 
They are weeping in the playtime of the others 
In the country of the free. 

***** 
*For oh!' say the children, 'we are weary. 
And we can not run or leap: 
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely 
To drop down in them and sleep.' 

***** 
They look up with their pale and sunken faces, 

And their look is dread to see. 
For they mind you of their angels m high places, 

With eyes turned on Deity. 
'How long; they say, 'how long, O cruel nat.on 

Will you stand to move the world on a chud s heart. 
Stifle down with a mailed heel >ts PalP'tat.on 

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart. 

Parliament was slow in undertaking the great task 
of supervising and regulating industrial life, but once 
it committed itself to the policy, it has made a steady 
advance. It was four years before Robert Peel s 
movement in Parliament for the P-t<=^''°" °* '=^^°^ 
resulted in any enactments. In the year 1819 the 
"Factory Act" was passed, and it apphed on y to 
cotton mills. It forbade the employment of children 
before they had reached the age of nine, shortened 
their hours to twelve, and required an allowance of 
half an hour for breakfast and one hour for dmner. 
The improvement was small, but it was a begmmng. 
From that day to the present Parliament, in which sits 



104 ENGLAND 

the able labor leader, Mr. John Burns, scarcely a 
session has passed without new laws and amendments 
being enacted, and all of them breathe the larger 
humane spirit of the modern days. It would not be 
interesting to the general student to recite every legal 
enactment. It will be quite enough to state what 
the laws are to-day. In 1867 the " Factory and 
Workshop Consolidation Act " abrogated previous 
special laws and undertook a regulation of industrial 
life, which is the law to-day modified. Children can 
no longer be employed until' they are ten years old, 
and their hours must not exceed twelve, with two 
hours out for meals. Every Saturday is a holiday and 
provision is made for eight half holidays in the year. 
Children between ten and fourteen years must be kept 
at work only half of each day, or if for full time, then 
alternate days must be free for school attendance. 
Other stringent provisions enforce good sanitation, 
protect in dangerous occupations, require medical 
certificates, and provide penalties for infraction of any 
of the regulations. 

The last addition to the above act was the " Shop- 
hours Act " of 1892, which still prevails, with few 
modifications. It prohibits the employment of per- 
sons under eighteen for more than seventy-four hours 
in any week, and applies to stores, shops, markets and 
warehouses. In 1899 another act compelled the pro- 
prietors of stores to supply a sufficient number of 
seats for their female employees. There are also 
laws (the last having been enacted in 1897) which 



ENGLAND 105 

fix the liability of an employer for accidents or 
deaths, the compensation bearing some proportion to 
the employee's earnings, and from which there is no 
relief save when " serious and wilful misconduct " can 
be shown. This law is in effect a sort of an accident 
insurance, and is an implied part of every contract. 
Passing from factory to farm life, we find some 
progress has here been made against the harsh condi- 
tions that once prevailed, but there is still need for a 
larger supervision to protect children and laborers 
from rapacious employers. The greatest advance in 
agricultural life has been made along lines of better- 
ment. English tenants can now, by a recent law, 
maintain a bill for improvements made during their 
occupancy. In 1894 the last of a series of acts makes 
it obligatory on the town councils to provide people, 
either by purchase or allotment from common lands, 
small farms which must be rented out to those who 
desire to set up homes and utilize their odd hours on 
their grounds. This return to an old condition by 
which the people have an interest, as did their fathers, 
in the land they occupy, has been eagerly accepted 
with inestimable benefits. The latest statistics show 
that in 1895 more than half a million holdings were 
leased out by the town councils. The first acts only 
contemplated helping to small holdings, but subsequent 
laws have extended the policy to farms of five to fifty 
acres, and have provided measures to assist small 
farmers in buying land, by a loan system, which en- 
ables them to buy a small farm as soon as one-fifth of 



106 ENGLAND 

the value can be paid down. Easy terms are given on 
the balance, one quarter of which may be left and paid 
in perpetual annual ground rent. The influence of this 
wholesome plan on economic and social life is work- 
ing marked salutary changes all over England. From 
being mere laborers, thousands have passed into 
proprietorship, with the improvement of social stand- 
ing and better economic conditions. In villages, a 
similar plan assists the employees of store and shop 
to acquire cottage homes. 

Along industrial and economic lines the govern- 
ment is vastly assisting by a system of sanitary in- 
spection and enforcement of wholesome regulation 
whenever any aggrieved persons will apply for re- 
lief from the ill-effects of bad drainage or condi- 
tions which are dangerous to health. The govern- 
ment control of the telegraph and also all the tele- 
phone service but that operated by one company, the 
parcels-post system by which the post-oflices receive 
and transmit packages of as heavy as twenty-one 
pounds and deliver them — all these give a public 
service at minimum charges and indirectly benefit 
several economic conditions. ' 

It would be interesting to extend this study and 
consider the rise, condition, and effect of trades- 
unions, employers' associations, co-operative socie- 
ties, profit-sharing plans and kindred subjects, but this 
would extend this chapter beyond reasonable length. 



ENGLAND 107 

In the main the experiences in the United States are 
being repeated in Great Britain. Passion is just as 
strong there, and opinions differ quite as widely on all 
these matters as in America./^ 



CHAPTER IX 

CONDITION OF EDUCATION 

THE first Parliamentary grant for public educa- 
tion in England was only in 1832. That year 
the House of Commons voted $200,000 toward the 
building of public schools, and seven years later much 
more was done for this cause. Besides, some sys- 
tem in administering public education began to ap- 
pear in that period, and inspectors of schools were 
for the first time appointed to exercise supervision 
over private, as well as board, or public, schools. 

The founder of England's early educational sys- 
tem, which dates from 1839, was a medical man. Dr. 
Phillips Kay, who became secretary of the Educa- 
tional Department. In the course of his practice he 
had observed the gross ignorance prevalent in many 
large towns, and became convinced that persistent 
efforts were needed to cope with it. He made a 
practical study of the educational methods followed 
in Holland, Prussia, and Switzerland, countries at 
that time far ahead of England in providing efficient 
teaching. Dr. Kay felt that the chief need was 
carefully trained teachers, and advised the establish- 
ing of a state training college, but the idea met with 
opposition. However, he was persistent, and with 
the help of Mr. E. C. Tufnell, a school for pupil- 
teachers was started, and so was laid the founda- 

108 



ENGLAND 109 

tion of the English normal school system. Dr. Kay's 
school proved a great success, and in 1842 was recog- 
nized by the department of public education, which 
that year granted it $5,000 to carry on and improve 
its work. 

The approval of public education was now grow- 
ing, and in 1847 the Parliamentary grant was in- 
creased to $500,000 and a Code was agreed upon 
for the conduct of education, which, with a few modi- 
fications, lasted for fourteen years, and at the end 
of that period the annual grant for education, science, 
and art had arisen to over $6,000,000. In 1858 a 
Royal Commission under the Duke of Newcastle was 
appointed to enquire into the state of popular educa- 
tion, and reported in 1861. The system had then 
reached one-eighth of the population, but the attend- 
ance was very irregular, and not more than a fourth 
of the children left school fairly well taught. The 
report of the Commission fell into the hands of Mr. 
Robert Lowe, vice-president of the Council in 
charge of education, who dealt with it in a very 
drastic manner, and produced a Revised Code. Its 
main feature will surprise American educators, for it 
was nothing less than a proposal to grant to any 
school from public funds an amount in proportion to 
the number of scholars who passed a successful ex- 
amination in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Mr. 
Lowe's Revised Code did not find universal favor, but 
it was adopted, and while it proved economical and 
made the public schools more efficient, it did little 



no ENGLAND 

more to advance the progress of education. How- 
ever, public education was rapidly growing, and 
in 1869 there were in England and Wales alone, 
11,000 elementary day schools, 2,000 night schools, 
with 1,450,000 children on the registers and 1,000,000 
in an average attendance. The school population 
was, however, far in excess of these figures, and in 
some places the deficiency in attendance was very 
serious. 

It was clear that if the children of England and 
Wales were to be educated, the existing system was 
wholly inadequate. Accordingly, in 1870, the sub- 
ject was taken in hand by Mr. Gladstone's adminis- 
tration, and Mr. W. E. Forster, the vice-president of 
the Council, succeeded in carrying through Parlia- 
ment an Elementary Education Act, which will 
make its author's name ever memorable among the 
benefactors of his countrymen. Its chief provisions 
were : sufficient schools should be provided for one- 
sixth of the population ; every elementary school 
should be taught by a qualified teacher, and should 
be subject to inspection ; that in all such schools relig- 
ious instruction should be given at the beginning or 
end of the teaching, and that parents should be en- 
titled to withdraw their children from religious in- 
struction ; that in the public schools (called Board 
Schools in England), no catechism or religious for- 
mulary distinctive of any religious denomination 
should be used ; and finally, that the Educational 
Department should not take any account of religious 



ENGLAND 111 

instruction, and the inspector should not examine 
in religious subjects. 

Mr. Forster's Act also authorized school boards 
to raise money by a school rate to build schools and 
for other scholastic purposes ; and to take steps to 
enforce compulsory attendance of children at schools 
and to supply free education to the children of poor 
parents. A subsequent act made education free to 
all who demanded it for their children. As a result 
of these wise laws, a great impetus was given to the 
progress of education. All over England places vied 
with each other in building schoolhouses, while the 
quality of instruction was everywhere improved, and 
many subjects were now taught which had once been 
considered quite beyond the range of elementary 
schools. The wave of educational enthusiasm that 
swept over England will be better understood by com- 
paring the statistics of 1901 with those given herein 
for 1869. In the former year over five and a half 
million scholars were on the registers of the elemen- 
tary schools, with an average attendance of over 
four and a half millions. The number of elementary 
day schools had risen to 20,022, of which 17,008 
were absolutely free; and 31,038 pupil-teachers were 
being trained to fill positions. Five years ago the 
central government disbursed for education over 
forty-one million dollars, and this amount has been in- 
creased every year since. 

A feature of the English system is the Continua- 
tion School, for those who have left the day schools, 



112 ENGLAND 

and of this class the latest obtainable census gave 
nearly 6,000, with an attendance of almost half a 
million. It is worthy of special mention that nearly 
every town in England has now one or more evening 
continuation schools, which provide efficient teaching 
for those who can not attend the day schools. It is 
also noteworthy that while a majority of those reg- 
istered in these schools are under the age of six- 
teen, ten per cent of the whole number are adults. 
These schools, like the public schools, are aided by 
the government and are under its inspection. 

" The existence of a growing desire for pro- 
longed education has led to the establishment in Lon- 
don and many of the chief industrial centers of 
* higher grade schools.' These are not in the true 
sense secondary schools, and are in no wise intended 
to lead upward to colleges and universities ; but they 
take the scholar who has made good use of the ele- 
mentary school up to the age of fourteen, and pro- 
vide for him a developed program of studies on the 
same lines, up to fifteen or sixteen. These schools 
supply a real want and are rapidly growing in use- 
fulness and favor with the more intelligent parents. 
But the question has arisen whether such prolongation 
of the school course beyond the age of fourteen — 
the statutory limit of compulsory education — is con- 
sistent with the intention of the Educational Acts; 
and the additional subjects taught in the higher 
grade schools, such as modern languages, mathe- 
matics and various branches of physical science, can 



ENGLAND 113 

come properly within the domain of elementary in- 
struction. The more enterprising of the school boards 
have answered the question for themselves, and have 
made generous provision for higher-grade day schools 
and for evening continuation schools." 

In addition to the board, or public, schools there is 
in Great Britain another class of schools, both ex- 
tensive and useful. These are the " voluntary schools 
which have been established by religious bodies and 
derive a portion of their income from the contribu- 
tions of the churches. In them it is permissible to 
give instruction in the distinctive doctrines of the 
body to which they belong. The voluntary schools 
are chiefly those connected with 'the Established 
Church, and in rural districts are the only public ele- 
mentary schools accessible to the children. Even in 
the largest cities their attendance is large, and they 
must be considered as performing an important part 
in public education. In London the attendance at 
voluntary schools, including those of the Church of 
England, the Catholics, and the Wesleyans was, even 
in 1891, 174,702, while in the board schools it was 
439,744. Year by year the discrepancy increases 
throughout the country, and the attendance at the 
voluntary schools either remains stationary or grad- 
ually declines." 

Still the existence of the voluntary schools is a 
powerful element to be reckoned with in all school 
legislation. It was the class occasioned by a double- 
headed system of board and voluntary school, as well 



114 ENGLAND 

as the doubtfully legal secondary schools, that occa- 
sioned an effort to correlate them into a system which 
would reduce the cost of public education and make it 
more effective. The school acts here referred to 
were introduced and became a law in 1902, during 
the administration of Mr. Balfour. Never in recent 
times has any legislation met with such a storm of 
protest, especially from the hosts of Non-conformists 
who objected to having the administration of the 
public schools placed under the control of the Estab- 
lished Church people, for this was the effect of that 
law. At this writing, May 20, 1906, Parliament is 
considering a new act, which the Liberal ministry 
has introduced, to annul the obnoxious features of the 
present law and provide for a larger degree of 
efficiency in the public schools. 

The urgent need of some provision for technical 
education was not generally felt in England until 
twenty-five or thirty years ago, when manufacturers 
awoke to the perception of the fact that in many 
matters of industrial work, Continental workmen 
were superior. In the application of science to in- 
dustries England seemed to be falling behind her 
neighbors, and those who studied the question of in- 
feriority of English artisans ascribed it to a want of 
proper training and to the lack of schools in which 
such training could be acquired. In 1878 several of 
the great city companies, in co-operation with the 
Corporation of London, established an institute for 



ENGLAND 115 

the advancement of technical education. Subse- 
quently a Royal Commission was appointed to en- 
quire into the subject, and published a long report in 
1882. In 1889 the Technical Instruction Act was 
passed, authorizing the county councils and other 
bodies to raise money by taxation to establish tech- 
nical schools. It is significant of the aroused feeling 
that by 1900 the sum raised for this purpose was nearly 
four millions of dollars. The subjects taught in the 
technical schools vary according to the districts in 
which they are established. In many counties agri- 
cultural instruction is of first need, while in manu- 
facturing districts, in the mining regions and com- 
mercial centers, appropriate instruction to the needs 
is given preference. In a recent educational exhibit 
of work done in the London schools there were 
shown carpentry, joinery, plumbing, masonry, black- 
smithing, stone and wood carving, plaster-work, 
staircasing, and other lines in the building trades. 
The variety and extent of the subjects taught were 
also further indicated by exhibits in engineer's tools, 
printing, photography, bicycles, carriages, watches, 
jeweler's and silversmith's work, engraving, enam- 
eling, bookbinding, picture framing, and much more. 
All this was the work of the technical schools of one 
city alone, but what is going on in London is also 
being done all over Britain, and if American manu- 
facturers are to successfully compete with those of 
England, it behooves them to cease trusting too much 
to native genius and begin to set up schools every- 



116 ENGLAND 

where, where the hand and brain of our artisans will 
be trained for higher excellence. 

" In the sphere of university education," writes 
Mr. J. C. Fitch in an able article in the Educational 
Review, " the last few years have witnessed remark- 
able development. Americans who are familiar with 
the fact that there are in the States no less than four 
hundred and eighty colleges and universities which 
have the power to confer degrees, are often struck by 
the smallness of such institutions in the old country. 
But it should be understood that here the establishment 
of a university is an event of serious national impor- 
tance. No such power can be exercised without a 
royal charter, and every academic degree is thus 
ultimately sanctioned by the Crown. At the com- 
mencement of the queen's reign there were in Eng- 
land only the two ancient universities of Oxford and 
Cambridge; in Ireland, Trinity College; and in Scot- 
land, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and St. An- 
drews. The year 1837 saw the foundation of the 
London University, and Durham also received a 
charter. Subsequently, Owen College, Manchester, 
had associated with itself the local colleges of Liver- 
pool and Leeds, and became incorporated under the 
name of the Victoria University. In 1893 the Univer- 
sity of Wales was legally constituted, and already 
has affiliated to it the three colleges of Bangor, Cardiff, 
and Aberystwyth. In the last year of the nineteenth 
century the Birmingham University, which will ab- 
sorb the well-known Mason's College in that city, 



ENGLAND 117 

received its royal charter of incorporation. At all 
the great industrial centers, notably in Newcastle, 
Sheffield, Nottingham, and Bristol, colleges of univer- 
sity rank have been established, partly at the cost of the 
municipalities and partly of rich and generous citi- 
zens. The college at Newcastle has become federated 
with the University of Durham; and other colleges 
will probably be associated ere long either with the 
Victoria University, the Midland University of Bir- 
mingham, or possibly with a new federation for the 
west of England, including Bristol and Exeter. All 
these institutions are well officered in the departments 
of the languages of humanities, and especially in such 
departments of physical sciences as are most nearly 
akin to the principal industries of the district. ' Hav- 
ing regard to their origin and to the new forms of 
intellectual and practical activity which are the result 
of our modern experience, it is probable that the types 
of university education which may thus be evolved in 
our provincial towns will be found to diiifer from each 
other, and from those which have prevailed in the 
ancient universities. But the inbred conservatism of 
the learned classes in England may be confidently 
relied upon to maintain, in all the institutions to which 
the government Intrusts degree-giving powers, a high 
standard of scholarship and intellectual excellence. 
" In Ireland the university problem is complicated 
by the fact that eighty per cent of the population of 
the island are Roman Catholics, and that they and 
the whole Irish priesthood desire a university which 



118 ENGLAND 

shall be distinctly Catholic in its character, and under 
the supervision of ecclesiastical authority. There are 
no tests at Trinity College, Dublin; and the Royal 
University, which is mainly an examining board, re- 
ceiving students from Catholic colleges and from the 
queen's colleges, also awards degrees to students of 
all creeds, after examination in secular subjects only. 
But this open provision is not satisfactory to the 
Catholic hierarchy, and the demand for an exclusively 
Roman Catholic university meets with considerable 
sympathy, not merely from the Irish people, but also 
from some prominent English statesmen of both par- 
ties. On the other hand, it is rightly contended, that 
in every one of the ancient universities of the United 
Kingdom, all theological tests, whether for students 
or for the governing bodies, have been abandoned; 
that no one of the newer universities, either here or 
in our colonies, is sectarian in its character; and that, 
with one rather unimportant exception — that of 
Lavalin, Lower Canada — there is not in the whole of 
the king's dominions one which has a distinctively 
theological character or form of government. It may 
be added that, in the true interests of higher educa- 
tion, colleges with a pronounced denominational char- 
acter may very properly receive full recognition and 
public aid. But a university is something more than 
a college; it is a corporate body, intrusted by the 
Crown with the power of setting up the standard of 
learning, and of rewarding intellectual merit per se- 
In the exercise of this power denominational consid- 



ENGLAND 119 

erations clearly have no lawful place. To establish 
a new university under the control of the Roman 
Catholic hierarchy, and vv^ith a view to strengthen the 
influence of one religious communion, would be a 
reactionary step of serious magnitude on the part of 
the state which has, one by one, taken away all ex- 
clusive privileges from the adherents of its Established 
Church. Oxford and Cambridge, with the traditions 
of a thousand years behind them, have ceased, as far 
as the award of academic honors is concerned, to be 
Anglican institutions. Neither the Presbyterians nor 
the Wesleyans have asked for universities of their 
own. There is but one church that puts forth a de- 
mand for exceptional treatment and for a sectarian 
university. For the present statesmen and leaders of 
public opinion in England are hesitating whether to 
refuse or to comply with this demand. It is probable 
that Parliament will arrive at some compromise 
whereby the fullest liberty and encouragement shall 
be given to such teaching as Catholics desire, and at 
the same time the meaning of a university degree 
shall not be altered; while the distinguishing mark 
of scholarship shall be awarded on grounds of intel- 
lectual merit alone, without reference to the theolog- 
ical opinions of the candidate. 

One of the most important events of the closing 
year of the nineteenth century was the reorganization 
of the University of London. Founded in 1837, its 
charter recognized it as an examining body in close 
connection with certain other colleges, and empowered 



120 ENGLAND 

it to examine the students from those institutions and 
to award them with degrees and honors. In 1878 a 
new charter threw open the examinations to all 
comers. Thus, for many years, the London University 
has been mainly an examining body rather than a 
teaching body, and has conferred its honors on can- 
didates from all parts of the country and the colonies. 
It has, in fact, been an imperial, not a local, university. 

But now the University has faculties and boards 
of studies for each of the departments of university 
instruction, including engineering, education, and 
economic and political science, and provides both for 
internal students who are pursuing a regular course 
of study under college professors, and also for exter- 
nal students who may receive degrees after examina- 
tion only, and on the same conditions as those which 
have hitherto existed. How important the mainte- 
nance of the system of external graduation is, may be 
inferred from the fact that in the year 1898 no less 
than 6,319 candidates presented themselves at the 
opening examinations; that of those, 1,078 men and 
506 women passed at matriculation ; 285 men and 243 
women in the examinations for degrees in arts; 255 
men and 52 women in science; and 406 men and 51 
women in medicine. 

" London has long been the only great capital of 
Europe without a real university taking cognizance, 
not only of examinations and degrees, but also of 
the higher culture generally. Otherwise no London 
university could be commensurate with the magni- 



ENGLAND 121 

tude and intellectual influence of the metropolis. It 
is plainly impossible to reproduce on the banks of 
the Thames an institution appealing, like Oxford or 
Cambridge, by its beauty, its repose, and its venerable 
and touching historical associations, to the affections 
of students. But the very absence of tradition and 
precedent renders it freer to adapt itself to new condi- 
tions and to try new experiments. The London Uni- 
versity has it in its power to develop into an institu- 
tion of an original and noble type. By providing 
special chairs for the encouragement of post-graduate 
studies, by showing how existing colleges may be 
brought into mutually helpful relations, and by kin- 
dling among London citizens that spirit of local pa- 
triotism which makes men proud of their birthplace 
and anxious to promote its welfare and the fame of 
its institutions, the University bids fair to realize in 
London Bacon's dream of a New Atlantis — a great 
seat of learning, the chosen home of scientific inves- 
tigation and experiment, a bold pioneer in the discov- 
ery of new truth, the hospitable center at which the 
philosopher and the ' merchants of light ' and the 
* interpreters of nature ' from all regions of the earth 
will always receive a cordial welcome."* 



CHAPTER X 

women's colleges in ENGLAND 

THE revival of women's education in England has 
now a record of nearly sixty years behind it. In 
the first half of the last century girls of the upper 
classes were, for the most part, educated at home by 
governesses, usually foreigners ; more rarely were sent 
to private boarding-schools. No possibility of training 
was open to an English woman, for teaching was not 
looked upon as a profession, but as the one resource 
for all better-class women who through some untoward 
circumstance had been suddenly compelled to seek a 
livelihood. The average governess was a pitiful 
specimen of educated humanity. Some, of course, 
there were who, by travel or by private study, had 
reached a fair standard of attainment ; but the major- 
ity were utterly incapable of performing the duties 
undertaken. To help and protect this class the Govern- 
esses' Benevolent Association was formed in 1843, 
and as the needs grew was finally merged in 1848 into 
an educational institution known to the present day as 
Queen's College. 

The ideas with which the infant college started its 
career, strike us nowadays as exceedingly quaint. 
Each lecture was preceded by an apologetic introduc- 
tion, and in each case a lengthy explanation proved 
that the evils anticipated from the particular subject 

122 



ENGLAND 123 

under discussion were but fanciful. It is difficult for 
the modern mind to realize how great was the terror 
of learned ladies which prevailed in those early days. 
There were many students, however, and the col- 
lege flourished. The entry of a number of quite 
young girls made it necessary to organize a prepara- 
tory school, and after fifty-eight years both school and 
college are still doing most excellent work. 

Queen's College was in connection with the Church 
of England ; Bedford College, founded in 1849, met 
the needs of Nonconformists as well as Episcopalians, 
its principles being unsectarian, and in the manage- 
ment of its affairs the women took a greater part. Its 
founder and benefactress was Mrs. Reid, and believ- 
ing that women could best understand the needs of 
girls, she chose a co-operating feminine board. These 
women enrolled as lady-visitors and were expected to 
be present in turn at the college lectures. The lec- 
turers at this college have included such distinguished 
names as De Morgan, Newman, George Macdonald, 
and Sir Oliver Lodge. Of the students the best-known 
is George EHot, who attended the first Latin class, 
while in comparatively recent years Beatrice Harraden 
appears in the list. 

Owing chiefly to the efforts of two of the earliest 
students of Queen's College, Misses Buss and Beale, a 
thorough reform in girls' schools was inaugurated. The 
former founded the North London Collegiate School 
for girls, the first and still the very best of high 
schools. Miss Beale became principal of Cheltenham 



124 ENGLAND 

Ladies' College in 1858 and soon succeeded in raising 
it to the high rank which it still continues to hold. 
In 1865 girls were admitted to the Cambridge Local 
Examinations, which had been instituted for school- 
boys between the age of thirteen and fourteen. This 
proved a great step forward, for schools now had an 
aim to work for, and a link between girls' schools and 
the Cambridge University was supplied. 

In 1870 a second progressive step was taken, in the 
advent of a few women in Cambridge to work for the 
honors — degree examinations. They were successful, 
and the preliminary experiment being satisfactory, 
funds were raised and in 1873 Girton College was 
founded. Newnham College was founded about the 
same time as a hall of residence for girls preparing 
for Cambridge examinations, but very soon students 
began to study for the degree examinations. In 1881 
women were formally admitted to honors examinations 
and Girton and Newnham formally recognized, but as 
yet neither Oxford nor Cambridge have conferred ac- 
tual degrees upon women. 

The University of London was the pioneer in giv- 
ing full rights to women, opening its doors to them in 
1878. Bedford College sent in candidates to the very 
first examinations, and all distinguished themselves. 
It then adapted itself definitely to prepare for London 
degrees, opening classes in all art subjects, and adding 
one laboratory after another for the practical work 
in science until it was fully equipped. 

Queen's College developed along different lines. It 



ENGLAND 125 

opened no scientific laboratories, and made no attempt 
to prepare women for a professional life. It is at- 
tended by well-to-do girls who desire thorough study- 
but who do not expect to earn their living in any line 
for which a degree certificate is an advantage. The 
students now are considerably younger than those at 
Bedford. 

About the time of the opening of London Univer- 
sity, women began to be admitted to University Col- 
lege. The professors first held separate lectures for 
them, but wearied after a time of repeating them- 
selves and threw open the regular classes to the 
women. King's College has a special department for 
women where they do good work in languages and lit- 
erature; while University College in Liverpool, York- 
shire College in Leeds, Durham University, and the 
University of Wales admit women on exactly the same 
terms as men. Westfield College in Hampstead and 
Holloway College in Surrey complete the list of higher 
educational institutions for women in England. 

The students at women's colleges are recruited 
mostly from high schools of the type of the North 
London Collegiate for girls. Such a student has been 
applying herself for many years and has accumulated 
a great deal of knowledge. At the same time she has 
had much healthy exercise playing hockey, lawn ten- 
nis, etc., and much fun from her school societies. 
There is often a want of individuality and atmosphere 
about her, because school-life with its lessons, its 
games, and its societies is so engrossing that the girl 



126 ENGLAND 

develops in the one groove and is often very one-sided. 
Some come from private schools, and though their 
knowledge is more limited than the high-school girls, 
they are fresher and more original. 

The choice of the college usually depends upon the 
means, on the possibility of scholarships, and on the 
subjects which a girl wishes to study. Poor girls liv- 
ing within reach of a college are usually obliged to 
attend that college unless fortunate enough to obtain 
a scholarship to take them elsewhere. Rich girls go 
to Cambridge and Oxford, because the older uni- 
versities are of higher social standing. The stand- 
ard of preparation for all colleges is approximately the 
same, and one fault is common to all, — work is done 
too much with reference to the final examinations. 
This is at its worst in London, where it is also most 
excusable; for the London examinations are very 
difficult and at every one more than half the candidates 
fail. In Oxford and Cambridge actual failure is 
rare, but great value is laid on the attainment of 
first-class honors. 

A girl's life at college differs considerably with the 
place she selects, the greatest differences being between 
the residential and the non-residential colleges. 
Bedford College is essentially a non-residential school. 
There are no lectures in the morning or after five at 
night, and no interval in the middle of the day, so that 
each student has to make her lunch time fit in with her 
lectures as best she' may. Nearly all those who pre- 
pare for London degrees come from high schools, and 



ENGLAND 127 

there is such a vast amount to be learned for a London 
degree in arts or sciences that these girls are often 
overhurried, and scarcely have time to assimilate their 
work satisfactorily. However, there are given oppor- 
tunities for enjoyment and recreation. Residential 
pupils, and those of the non-residents who can be on the 
spot early enough, devote the morning before ten to 
amusement and exercise. In winter they play hockey ; 
in summer there is boating in Regent's Park and the 
swimming-baths are not far away. After five in the 
afternoon the various societies meet and are charac- 
teristic of college life, and tea is supplied by the tea 
club at four, forming a short break in the afternoon's 
work. The organization of these clubs often shows 
marked ability, and in them the girls learn much which 
is useful to them in larger spheres. 

University College, London, has both male and fe- 
male students, the laboratories are on a very large 
scale, and every facility for advanced work and orig- 
inal research is afforded. The average woman stu- 
dent here is older than her sister at Bedford, and is 
frequently specializing in some subject, along with her 
degree work. Teachers desiring to qualify in higher 
branches are frequent students at University College, 
and so the atmosphere is distinctly less crude and 
schoolgirl-like than at Bedford. The majority of the 
students are members of the Woman's Union which 
includes all the college clubs. Some of the latter are 
formed of women only, others are mixed and are 
affiliated to the Men's Union as well as to the 



128 ENGLAND 

Women's. Classes here begin at nine ; there are rarely 
any after five, and there is no lunch interval. The 
men and women work together in the laboratories, and 
learn much from each other, the women quite holding 
their own. The work is hard, but interesting and satis- 
factory, is keenly enjoyed by the students, and there 
is the sense of constant progress and at the same 
time the spirit of youthfulness and freshness. 

At Cambridge, and with few exceptions at Ox- 
ford, the students live in the colleges and devote all 
their time and energy^ to study and recreation. At 
Newnham and Girton it is usual for girls to stay three 
years, and only when they have special ability for 
four. At Girton each student has two very com- 
fortable rooms, — bedroom and study, — at Newnham 
only one. Breakfast and lunch may be taken at any 
reasonable hour ; dinner or " hall," as it is called, is at 
a fixed hour. The whole of the morning and part of 
the evening are devoted to work ; the afternoon, as is 
the habit at the older universities, is devoted to play. 
Science students only, who have much to do in 
laboratories, do not have their afternoons free. Girton 
is some distance from Cambridge, so that the girls go 
to and from the university lectiires in flies ; a great deal 
of the work is, however, individual, and is done either 
with women dons who live in the college or else with 
men who come out from Cambridge. Some of the 
students work day and night in their effort to get a 
" first class ;" others, who have come to the college be- 
cause of the pleasant life with its keen and intellectual 



ENGLAND • 129 

atmosphere, companionship, games, and societies, and 
beautiful surroundings, do not do much more than is 
necessary to get a tolerable place in the examination. 
Those are wisest who do not neglect the social side, 
for as much is learned from cocoa parties as from text- 
books, and those are fortunate who ever again spend 
such happy years as the three at Girton or Newnham. 
The college terms are not long, and reading parties — 
another of the joys of existence — are often formed, 
either in England or abroad, for those who wish to 
meet together in the summer and do some work. 

The conditions in Oxford are not unlike those at 
Cambridge, but another recreation, boating, is possible. 

There is no doubt that, from the point of view of 
supplying an ideally pleasant and not unprofitable ex- 
istence for girls who have just Seen set free from the 
restraints of school, but have not entered on the re- 
sponsibilities of life, the women's colleges in England, 
particularly the residential colleges, are a very great 
success. From the point of view of the kind of 
women they turn out, they can probably also be re- 
garded as a success. 

A very large number of university women take up 
teaching as a profession, namely, very nearly all those 
who graduate in arts or science from Bedford or 
University College, London, and perhaps half of the 
Oxford and Cambridge women. Such teachers could 
hardly be better prepared as regards knowledge, and 
they all know how to work, but they are one-sided and 
have to pay for their excellence by deficiencies in other 



130 ENGLAND 

respects. They have, in fact, been so busy studying 
that they are hopelessly ignorant of life, and they have 
mixed so much with young people of their own age 
that they have had no chance of getting- to know 
grown-up people or learning what ordinary human 
life is like. 

Many college women study medicine and they are 
liked as practitioners and are most successful in get- 
ting posts. A few take up journalism, a few have 
made their names in literature, and some have devoted 
themselves to social work./ 



CHAPTER XI 

BRITISH SOCIAL LIFE 

NOTHING shows more clearly that we are living 
in a transition age than the life in West Lon- 
don. It is a curious conglomeration of a past in- 
heritance, of present tastes, of future tendencies. 
The great palaces, the stately houses, the spreading 
trees in well-ordered parks, take our thoughts in a 
leisurely fashion down avenues that lead to a past 
age when life was not one long hurry in order to go 
to the next thing, but when men and women had time 
to be dignified and pause before the importance of 
their own existence. Little events bring great re- 
sults, and nothing has so changed the social life of 
West London, nothing has broken down class bar- 
riers so effectively, as the progress in the means of 
locomotion. I can well recollect my aunt's telling me 
of the first drive she ever took in a hansom cab. It 
was considered a sort of an expedition that had in it 
a spice of adventure, and her father, who accom- 
panied her, begged her to keep her parasol well be- 
fore her face. I also remember that my grand- 
mother told me that- she thanked heaven that she 
had never been in a hack cab in her life, and I still 
have a vivid remembrance of the swinging chariot, 
with two footmen hanging behind, which was con- 
sidered the only conveyance fit for any woman be- 

131 



132 ENGLAND 

longing to her order. This change in the pomp of 
daily life has invaded every realm of society. In old 
days a ball was a ceremony which was considered a 
serious social observance ; dancing was a measured 
ritual, slow, punctilious ; every step was of impor- 
tance, and every step was taught — a very different 
pastime from the crowded romp which has taken the 
place of that splendid though solemn recreation. 

I can also recollect the time when it was only 
whispered that any one received in society was con- 
nected with any trade or business ; but to-day, busi- 
ness and society are so combined that a man will, as 
has been very cleverly said by a pungent writer, 
" pull out a sample of kamptulicon from his pocket 
and beg his hostess to remember him when she re- 
covers her kitchen floor." West London in old 
days was essentially a city of ponderous pomp. Paris 
in comparison appeared as a bright firefly beside the 
grim darkness which surrounded England's metrop- 
olis. Now, the streets of London are brighter, if 
possible, than those of Paris, the shops as gay, the 
movement as vivacious. 

In the old days, the stately mansions in the West 
End were open for three or four months in the year. 
" The family came to town " — servants, carriages, 
horses, luggage, all were brought from the country 
house and established in Belgrave or Grosvenor 
Square. Now, Monday to Saturday may be spent 
in London, Saturday to Monday on the river, Tues- 
day to Thursday at some race-meeting. Rush and 



ENGLAND 133 

hurry, hurry and rush, characterize the Hfe of those 
who are called " the smart set." The early ride in 
the park, the afternoon drive and shopping and calls, 
have given place to polo matches and pigeon-shoot- 
ing, cycling parties, motor-scorching, bridge, and 
poker. If you wanted in the old days to see your 
friends, you could invariably find them at a quiet, 
solemn lunch, assembled in dim stately dining-rooms 
between one and two o'clock. Now, restaurants, 
hotels, tea-houses and lunch-rooms are the re- 
sorts of the representatives of the fashionable world. 
But probably the greatest change of all has 
taken place in the methods by which people are ad- 
mitted to the inner circles of what is called " the 
best society." Many causes have been at work, 
which have, some for the better and some for the 
worse, broken down the barriers that existed be- 
tween the aristocratic classes and the great profes- 
sional and money-making world. It was of set pur- 
pose that Pitt created a plebeian aristocracy. He made 
peers of the successful money-lmakers, and, as 
Lord Beaconsfield said, " caught them from the alleys 
of Lombard Street and clutched them from the 
counting-houses of Cornhill." But to-day, the suc- 
cessful brewer who has coined enough money out of 
the public houses of East London and other great 
centers, the reckless speculator or the great Jewish 
financier, are among those eagerly selected for hered- 
itary seats in the House of Lords; and to-day, if the 
pedigrees of the great families were examined, not 



134 ENGLAND 

one would be found that has not reinforced its 
exchequer by an alHance with a great commercial 
house. In an age when money is the real touch- 
stone of power, the great names of England are freely 
bartered for fortunes that have been built up by 
successful money-makers. 

Another great change which has taken place is 
undoubtedly the admittance into society of the 
Jews. Sixty years ago, it would have been impos- 
sible for any Jew to obtain a social standing in Lon- 
don. To-day, not only is every great financial house, 
save one, practically Jewish, but a large Jewish 
plutocracy forms one of the pillars of social life sup- 
porting the throne and re-enforcing the power of 
English aristocracy. 

And yet with these many anomalies we see amidst 
the traditions of the past, there is no place where 
those traditions have so firm a hold or appeal so 
strongly to the popular imagination as in West Lon- 
don. All who witnessed the splendid pageant of the 
Coronation will have realized how dearly the Eng- 
lish still love pomp. The great mass of the people are 
gratified to see the fruits of their taxation, and revel 
in spectacular pageants ; but even at the most im- 
pressive moment of that great ceremony, when the 
trappings of the cream-colored horses were glit- 
tering in the sun and the painted coach bore its bur- 
den of robed and crowned royalty, riveting every eye, 
the hooting of a motor-car and the presence of a 
bicycle testified to the fact that all this was a resur- 



ENGLAND 135 

rection of past times, not an indication of future cus- 
toms. The presence of a thousand kodaks in the 
streets upon that memorable Coronation Day testi- 
fied to another transformation which has brought 
far-reaching results that it would be impossible to 
detail here. 

Probably the greatest visible change, however, 
that has taken place in West London is the manner 
in which the older houses have passed from the 
hands of their proprietors into the possession of the 
newly rich. Park Lane at one time was considered 
to be the home of the country's great ruling class 
only. To-day, almost every large house is inhab- 
ited by either a Jewish stockbroker or an African 
millionaire. Pecuniary pressure has forced the for- 
mer proprietors into smaller houses or flats, or that 
strange compromise now known as a maisonette, 
which is simply a fine word for living over a shop. 

The absence of privacy is again another marked 
social change in the life of the inhabitants of the 
West End. In earlier days, the reticent announce- 
ment that such and such a family had left London 
was all that appeared about people who occupied 
great positions, but nowadays the interviewer invades 
their morning-room at eleven o'clock. Every detail 
of their lives is known ; they are asked their opinion 
on the best books, the best flowers, the worst plays, 
the position of women, the position of men; in fact, 
the dissection of every taste, habit, idea, is de rigueur. 
Nothing is withheld; even the details of life's great- 



136 ENGLAND 

est emotions are freel}^ demanded, or the relation of 
the most momentous event that has influenced them. 
Everything is laid bare before the operators of the 
press. A large portion of society spends its time in 
reading with interest what the other half wears, does, 
thinks, plays at, in order to imitate it as nearly as 
possible. This modern mania for publicity has 
broken down the seclusion of domestic life, and with 
this same emancipation from all reserve has come a 
want of restraint in conversation which was for- 
merly unknown. Decoruni is almost extinct. There 
is scarcely any subject that is not discussed at so- 
ciety's dinner-table, no illness that is not mentioned, 
no story that is not told. 

A well-known writer in a delightful book on so- 
ciety, speaking of this, gives an illustrative anecdote 
which came before his own notice. A lady was 
sending her youngest boy to our public school at 
Eton, and in talking over his new life she gave him 
the sagest of all mother's counsels, " Never listen to 
anything which you would not wish your sisters to 
hear." He gazed at her with awe-struck eyes and 
then replied with emotion : " I should think not, in- 
deed, mother ! If Polly and' Kitty could not hear it, 
it must be awful." The young girl of the present 
day in many social circles is as free in her conversa- 
tion and as emancipated in her ideas as the brother 
who formerly had to guard her innocence and re- 
strain his conversation in her presence. 

All these changes which have affected British 



ENGLAND 137 

society so deeply can not be traced to any one cause, 
much less to any one set of men, although the 
" newly arrived " social leaders have often been 
blamed with bringing them about by undiscerning 
critics. At any rate, the representatives of the great 
financial houses have come to stay and must be 
reckoned with as a social factor in the future. 

It is in a way curious that these men who have 
been all their lives engrossed in money-making should 
aspire to social recognition. Their motives are not 
in all cases the same. A few, no doubt, have become 
tired of business activity and yet do not wish to pass 
into the sort of mediocrity v^^hich involves no struggle. 
Used to climbing, day by day, in their business 
affairs, they must have some aim, some ambition, 
after retirement from financial circles. And so so- 
ciety attracts them. But it is more often the ambi- 
tion of the women of the household which impels to 
a social campaign of lavish expenditure. To many 
women any charmed circle to which they are not ad- 
mitted has an attractiveness from the very fact of 
the difficulty of entrance to it. 

Then, too, the young Englishman who is forced 
to go to South Africa or the other colonies for his 
livelihood rarely regards his situation as a perma- 
nent one. He thinks of England as his home and is 
ambitious to return to it and establish his family 
there permanently, and the surest way of accomplish- 
ing this object is an alliance with one of the promi- 
nent families in reduced circumstances, or an entrance 



138 ENGLAND 

into society by means of wealth. What is true of 
British society is also true of society in the United 
States. The fashionable set in New York is very 
much more largely recruited from the wealthy fami- 
lies than from those whose main claim to prominence 
is the possession of an ancient name. 

And yet American society offers a far less diver- 
sified and interesting life than does British society. 
The great families of England have vast estates to 
manage, tenants dependent upon them, and a score 
of other responsibilities. Then, too, the society woman 
of London is frequently a keen political partizan. 
She follows closely the careers of public men and 
often is so thoroughly posted in the affairs of the 
nation that she can criticize parties and politics with 
insight and keenness. American society, on the 
other hand, not only takes no part in political affairs, 
but is not at all backward in affecting a total igno- 
rance of the subject. Even the men show only luke- 
warm, passing interest, and rarely run for office. 
There is a tendency among them to regard politics 
as a business to be handed over to the professional 
politician, not as an intimate concern of their own. 
Thus it is that in London' society may be found the 
most prominent men of affairs, while New York so- 
ciety is scarcely interested in anything or any one 
outside of its own more or less narrow limits. 

West London presents a picture which is full of 
danger and difficulty. In old days, after the season 
,was over, as I have already said, families traveled 



ENGLAND 139 

back again to their country homes, their round of 
quiet duties, their accountabiUty toward dependents on 
great estates, which made them to a large extent 
realize the responsibility of existence. It would have 
been thought impossible for the members of a fam- 
ily to be absent from church on Sundays without an 
adequate reason, even though they probably would 
profess no special personal religion. This was at any 
rate the acknowledgment of a God and of a power 
higher than their own, a world beyond their little 
world. Now, by train or motor, the smart set rushes 
from London. Sunday is spent in expeditions, boat- 
ing and bicycling. Formerly, the family dinner used 
to consist of sort of an abbreviated meal in the eve- 
ning in order to allow the servants to go to church. 
Now, an elaborate feast of many courses is suc- 
ceeded by a late supper. It has been well said that 
the society existence of West London begets a life 
which is absolutely divorced from duty. In fact, it 
has come to be regarded as a sin, in a certain set, to 
take any concern of life seriously. 

Carlyle once said that there is no class among us 
intrinsically so valuable and so recommendable as 
our aristocracy. I am led to believe that if this is 
true of latter-day London society, it is now largely 
due to the many and the much-discussed marriages 
of wealthy American girls to titled Englishmen. 
Our British aristocracy has replenished its exchequer, 
perhaps, by means of them, but it has done something 
more. Through them it has brought home new vital- 



140 ENGLAND 

ity, fresh outlook, and great vigor. There is an 
awakening among hundreds to the needs of their 
fellow men. There is a quicker concept of the eternal 
truth of the great brotherhood of the race, and that 
has sent many young men from the universities to the 
Settlements of East London, many women to de- 
voted work among those of less opportunity than 
themselves. We live in a tradition period. The in- 
stitutions of the past are re-forming themselves on 
new models, and at such transition times the worst 
is often emphasized while the best is evolving.^ 



CHAPTER XII 

RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF THE ENGLISH 

THE stranger in London to-day, when he stands 
at the foot of Nelson's column in Trafalgar 
Square, may congratulate himself upon the fact that 
he has reached the very core and center of the great- 
est empire which the world has ever seen, and at the 
moment of the greatest power which that empire has 
thus far attained. 

It is no wonder, then, that London, the heart of 
the Empire, throbs with the sense of imperial power. 
A London paper speaks, with pardonable pride, of 
" a vitality pulsating from the center to the extremi- 
ties of the empire, which will enable England, if she 
be true to her task, to hold between contending com- 
binations the balance of the world." People call 
Paris gay and London gloomy, but these epithets no 
longer apply. The dreadful wounds inflicted upon the 
self-respect of France have dimmed the gayety and 
sharpened the temper even of Paris ; whereas in Lon- 
don every one, old and young, feels himself to be a 
component part of a mighty empire. ^ . 

But there is another side to this picture. England, 
though triumphant in war and strong in the devotion 
of her colonies, has begun to tremble for her commer- 
cial supremacy. Shrewd observers, men who have 
gone behind the scenes, report that the trade of Lon- 

141 



142 ENGLAND 

don is declining, and that the metropoHs is beginning 
to Hve upon past earnings. In manufactures Eng- 
land is being hard pressed by Germany, and still more 
by the United States. 

Does this compel us to conclude that the British 
Isles have passed the climax of their prosperity and 
have entered upon the down-hill path? The answer 
to that question depends upon the answer to another, 
— namely, are the English deteriorating in character 
or in energy? For I assume, despite the brilliant 
theories of Mr. Brooks Adams, that this is the sole 
cause of national decay; that no commercial policy 
or financial system, however erroneous, can work the 
ruin of a race which retains its moral and physical 
stamina. 

Do our British cousins, then, show any signs of 
moral or physical decadence? If we may trust so 
keen an observer as the late Mr. G. W. Stevens, him- 
self a patriotic Englishman, there are such signs. 
" Compared with our ancestors," he said, " we do not 
drink so well, love so well, fight so well; physically 
and emotionally we have subdued ourselves to a 
lower plane." 

If there be any decadence in the English, it is a 
decadence which they share with the rest of the civil- 
ized world, and it is possible that what they have lost 
in some directions they have gained in others. The 
whole world is, as Mr. Stevens put it, " subdued to a 
lower plane." People have become more temperate, 
less childlike, more reasonable; and undoubtedly with 



ENGLAND 143 

the development of the nervous system and of the 
imagination there has been a loss of animal courage; 
but it may have been more than supplied by an in- 
crease of moral courage. 

No one can come in contact with the English of 
to-day and conclude that they lack courage or en- 
ergy. England is suffering rather from misdirected, 
or unapplied, energy. She is in the position of a man 
who, having enjoyed for many years a large income, 
continues, after his income has diminished, to live 
extravagantly and idly. The number of superfluous 
luxuries which a wealthy Englishman gathers about 
him is appalling: an army of servants, more horses 
than he can use, houses in town and country, kitch- 
ens like laboratories, bathrooms like plumbers' 
shops ; canes for every sort of walk ; bags, trunks, 
waterproofs, blankets, rugs, binocular glasses, and a 
thousand other things that tend to make life com- 
plicated, material, and unsatisfactory. 

Nor is indulgence in luxuries confined to the rich. 
The typical Englishman puts nothing aside. At Man- 
chester the working-classes are famous for buying the 
first of the early vegetables ; and among the same class 
all over the kingdom the use of alcoholic liquors is 
excessive. 

Even the love of sports and of outdoor exercise is 
now carried to an excess. It involves the expenditure 
of more time, more energy, and more money than the 
English can afford. Horse-racing is worse, for it in- 
volves gambling. Such are some of the ways in 



144 ENGLAND 

which John Bull is endangering his position in the 
world. He eats and drinks too extravagantly, and 
he neglects his business to amuse himself. 

But there is another drag upon John Bull, the 
effect of which is very little understood in this coun- 
try — I mean the aristocracy. To the imagination of 
an American, the English aristocracy figures as a 
kind of ornamental thing, furnishing some gifted states- 
men and many brave soldiers, but chiefly useful as a 
theme for the novelist and as an exemplar of good 
manners and good '' form." The Enghsh themselves 
are apt to look upon it in this light ; and even so hard- 
headed a man as the late Benjamin Jowett gravely re- 
marked, '' I do not think we can afford to give up 
aristocracy as an element of national education." The 
aristocracy may be all this, — though a keen observer 
declares that English duchesses have the worst man- 
ners in the world, — ■ but it is also something more and 
something worse. It is a contrivance for putting 
second- and third-class men into places that should be 
occupied by first-class men. 

This is most apparent in the army. All the cor- 
respondents and military critics who dealt with the 
South African War, whether friendly or hostile to 
the English, were agreed upon one point ; namely, that 
the English officers, as a class, were supremely brave, 
but also supremely stupid, careless, and incapable of 
adapting themselves to new conditions. The ineffi- 
ciency of the English officers is due mainly to the fact 
that the army is an aristocratic institution. An officer 



ENGLAND 145 

in a crack regiment must have a private income of 
at least $4,000 per annum, in addition to his pay; 
and unless he has a certain social standing, he 
would not be tolerated in the mess. Young men 
join the army not as a profession, but as a kind of 
sporting club. At a dinner party in London there 
was an officer lately returned, wounded, from the 
war. He was of the extreme " haw, haw " English 
type; and he declared that ''South Africa" was a 
" beastly place." There was really no amusement 
there until Lady Fitzdoodle came out and gave after- 
noon teas. Then it was " rather nice." What could 
such a soldier accomplish if he were pitted against an 
alert foreigner keenly interested in his profession, 
looking to it for his bread and butter, and eager for 
promotion ? 

To a great extent the officers of the government 
are selected upon the same aristocratic theory. The 
administration, like the army, is still in many respects 
a feudal institution. It does not gather to itself the 
best talent of modern, practical England; and hence 
its blunders. What is to be thought of a govern- 
ment which, though it foresaw, months if not years 
before the event, the clouds of war gathering over 
South Africa, yet sent its troops into the field armed 
with obsolete toy weapons, which carried about half 
as far as the Mausers of the Boers? 

It is impossible to believe that such a government 
represents the best abilities, the real energy, of the 
English people. It is a stupid government because 



146 ENGLAND 

it is an aristocratic government. At least half the 
members of the House of Commons belong to the 
aristocratic class, and many of them are the sons of 
peers. In 1886 one-quarter of them bore titles. It 
is a significant fact that the English ministry, at least 
whenever the Conservatives are in power, is always 
largely composed of Eton men. They go to Eton 
as boys because it is an aristocratic school ! and after- 
ward they get into Parliament, and thence into the 
ministry, because their wealth enables them to dis- 
pense with professional work, and because their birth 
recommends them to constituencies. On the other 
hand, to find a Rugby man you will search the roll of 
the British ministry almost in vain, for Rugby is a 
middle-class school. The one graduate of Rugby 
who has distinguished himself in Parliament is Mr. 
Goschen ; and he did not do so until he had made a 
large fortune in the city. 

The aristocracy is so deeply rooted in the respect 
and even in the affections of the country, its public 
services have been so great, and the character of 
many of its representatives is so high, that its aboli- 
tion is perhaps neither to be expected nor desired. 
But John Bull must find some way to prevent its 
acting as an extinguisher; he must select his servants 
and agents for their talents and not for their birth, 
or else he is likely to be outstripped in the race for 
commercial and even for military supremacy. 

The most striking difference between the English 
people of to-day and those of twenty-five years ago 



ENGLAND 147 

is that the old feeUng of perfect satisfaction with 
everything EngUsh has passed away. Even the coun- 
try gentry are becoming aHve to the deficiencies of 
their pohtical and social systems. 

John Bull, then, being for the first time in some 
hundreds of years alive to his deficiencies, and his 
stamina being, as I believe, unimpaired, it seems rea- 
sonable to conclude that he will continue to hold his 
place in the world. His climate remains to him, and 
the climate of England, uncomfortable and depress- 
ing though it may be in the dark months, is, never- 
theless, a guaranty of physical strength. 

An Englishman eats four sheep per annum; a 
Frenchman, only one and a half. A London doctor, 
who numbers among his patients many French resi- 
dents, told me that for them he usually prescribed 
only about one-half of the dose which he would give 
to a Briton. It has been found that certain race- 
horses, both trotters and runners, which were known 
in this country as delicate feeders, upon being ex- 
ported to England picked up an appetite and became 
stouter and stronger, and therefore speedier. 

Hawthorne said: "These Englishmen are cer- 
tainly a franker and simpler people than ourselves, 
from peer to peasant; but if we take it as com- 
pensatory on our part (which I leave to be consid- 
ered) that they owe these noble and manly quali- 
ties to a coarser grain in their nature, and that with 
a finer one in ours we shall ultimately acquire a 



148 ENGLAND 

marble polish of which they are unsusceptible, I be- 
lieve that this may be the truth." 

Here we touch upon what seems to be the funda- 
mental difference between the English and American 
people. The English have in their nature a founda- 
tion of barbarism, which Americans, owing perhaps 
to the greater development of their nerves and sen- 
sibilities, have left behind. The English, though the 
older people, are much the more primitive, closer to 
that vigorous savage from whom, after all, the 
dynamic force of a race is derived. Hence it is that 
England, far more than America, is a land of ex- 
tremes — extremes of ignorance and grossness, ex- 
tremes of cultivation and refinement. The race which 
has produced Shakespeare, Sir Isaac Newton, and 
Darwin is notorious for the stupidity and ignorance 
of its peasantry. 

But that same peasant is a jewel in the rough. 
One of the most sagacious of modern writers has ob- 
served, " It is not the nature of the aristocrat that 
permeates the cottager, but the nature of the cot- 
tager that permeates the aristocrat." The English 
cottager has contributed to the English aristocrat a 
moral and physical nature so robust that the aris- 
tocrat can safely be put through the process of cul- 
tivation without having the substance of his char- 
acter tried out of him. Parental training, the pub- 
lic school, the university, refined surroundings and 
traditions, religion and morality, the pride of birth 
and of family — these and other influences brought 



ENGLAND 149 

to bear for several generations will finally produce 
the English gentleman. The process is long in pro- 
portion to the roughness of the material, and much 
longer than it is with us. 

There is one thing, and perhaps only one, which 
can greatly abridge the process of making an Eng- 
lish gentleman, and that is the possession of genius. 
Keats, the most delicate and fastidious of poets, was 
the son of a butcher. Genius, in fact, springs most 
luxuriantly from a wild soil. Turner, the most im- 
aginative and ethereal of painters, was a man of low 
origin and gross habits. " No great poet," writes 
Mr. John Burroughs, ** ever appeared except from a 
race of good fighters, good eaters, good sleepers, good 
breeders." The problem of civilization is to train 
and cultivate the " noisy, sensual savage " existing in 
every man, without refining away those instincts of 
pride, of pugnacity, of pity, which make men strong 
and effective ; and perhaps the English, of all races 
in the world, have come the nearest to doing this. 

It is a significant fact, well worth considering, 
that in respect to mental activity England bears the 
same relation to Scotland that it does to the United 
States. Both in Scotland and in the United States 
the average of intelligence is far higher than it is in 
England ; but I think we must admit that in the 
nobler departments of intellectual achievement we 
also are as yet inferior to the English. The stand- 
ard, both in literature and in the fine arts, is higher 
in England than it is here. It is the very same in re- 



150 ENGLAND 

spect to oratory. The average of the speaking in the 
House of Commons is lower than it is in the American 
House of Representatives, but the best English 
speakers surpass the best American speakers. Even 
the judicial opinions of the English judges are better 
expressed than those of our judges — more racy and 
spontaneous, more literary. In learning generally, 
especially in theology, there can be no question of 
English superiority. 

But it is only in these higher branches that we 
are excelled by the English. The moment that you 
pass from pure science to applied science, or from 
science to the practical art in which it results, that 
moment the tables are turned, and the American be- 
comes the superior. In surgery, which is both a 
science and an art, both speculative and practical, we 
are probably on a par with the English; in civil or 
mechanical engineering, which is more practical and 
less theoretical, we excel the English ; and in trade, 
in mechanics, in manufactures, in the everyday affairs 
of life, the American is infinitely more skilful, more 
rapid, more effective, than the Englishman. 

The Englishman has none of that all-around men- 
tal activity which distinguishes the American. He 
knows only one thing — that by which he earns his 
living; and he does not desire to know anything else; 
far less is he ashamed of not knowing it. A London 
policeman, if you ask him about some distant street 
or building of importance, will reply civilly, but un- 
abashed, " I can't tell you, sir ; that is not in my beat.'' 



ENGLAND 151 

An American policeman would know the fact, and if 
he did not know it, he would feel called upon to apol- 
ogize for his ignorance. 

In a remote Maine village there was recently some 
occasion for a plumber, and a very good one was 
forthwith improvised from a carpenter. Such a 
thing would be impossible in England. Many a 
New England farmer can build or repair his barn, 
paint and plaster his house, " tinker " his mowing- 
machine, shoe his horse, doctor his cow, break his 
colt, row or sail his boat, " butcher " his pig, shear 
his sheep, skin a fox, track a deer, hive bees, serve as 
guide or lumberman, play the fiddle, solve a problem 
in arithmetic, make a good speech in town meeting, 
and do a hundred other things besides. There is 
probably not a man in all England who can do half 
so many things. The American is quick-witted, has 
far more general intelligence and information, and 
is therefore by far a better workman. 

In order rightly to understand the past or reason- 
ably to conjecture the future history of England one 
must remember that the British Empire has been 
created not mainly by the intellectual, but rather by 
the moral, qualities of the English. Upon this point 
one finds writers the most diverse expressing them- 
selves in words nearly the same. " The English did 
not calculate the conquest of the Indies," said Emer- 
son ; " it fell to their character." / 
(the end) 



AUTHORSHIP OF CHAPTERS 



a, h, c, d, and i, Edwin Hodder, in " The Life of a 
Century," published by George Nevins, Lon- 
don, England. 

e, Evelyn Clough. 

f, M. C. Tyler. 

g, Review of Reviews, 
h, Jacob Tison. 

j, English Illustrated Magazine. 

k, Lady Henry Somerset, in Cosmopolitan. 

I, Henry Childs Merriman, in Harper's Magazine, 



APR 5 1907 



